The Rally General Mattis Movement

Posted on April 8, 2016April 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

Ever wonder how the real political machinery works? While everyone is focused on Cleveland, the delegate count and accusations of lies, there is much more. Have you thought about those who have dropped out of the race? What is Jeb Bush or Rick Santorum or Bobby Jindal doing for this race? Everyone is fretting over a brokered convention and Paul Ryan but there is more going on.

Has anyone thought about the ‘why’ against Trump and affects to the Senate? What about that person who is the fresh face or a VP in the mix?

The Secret Movement to Draft General James Mattis for President

Gen. James Mattis doesn’t necessarily want to be president—but that’s not stopping a group of billionaire donors from hatching a plan to get him there.

Mak/DailyBeast: An anonymous group of conservative billionaires is ready to place their bets on a man dubbed “Mad Dog,” hoping to draft him into the presidential race to confront Donald Trump.

Think of it as a Plan B should Trump be nominated by the Republican Party in Cleveland: swing behind retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis and press him into service yet again as a third-party candidate.

Mattis is the former commander of Central Command, which includes the strife-afflicted conflict zones of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, and has developed a reputation among troops as a general officer who cares about the little guy. This reputation blossomed into the political realm during the 2012 presidential contest, when a Marine Corps veteran started an online campaign to write-in Mattis on presidential ballots—it ultimately lacked the backing to take off.

But this situation involves far bigger players: Close to a dozen influential donors—involving politically-involved billionaires with deep pockets and conservative leanings—are ready to put their resources behind Mattis. At their request, a small group of political operatives have taken the first steps in the strategic legwork needed for a bid: a package of six strategic memos outlining how Mattis could win the race, in hopes of coaxing him in.

The general has received the package of memos, according to two individuals involved with the project.

Mattis, who is also nicknamed the “warrior monk” for his contemplative devotion to the military arts, would be a fallback option for anti-Trump forces. But since the next series of GOP nomination contests heavily favor Trump, this is not exactly a fantasy scenario.

“Everyone is hoping that Ted Cruz pulls it out, but I think a great deal of Republicans would rally behind an American hero if the choice is between Mattis and Trump,” said John Noonan, a former Jeb Bush aide now involved in the project to draft Mattis.

“He’s a man of character and integrity. He’s given his life to his country. How do you ask someone like that to leap headfirst into this toxic mud-puddle of a race? It’s damn hard. But Trump is a fascist lunatic and Hillary has one foot in a jail cell. That means the lunatic can win. I’d be first in line to plead with the general to come save America,” Noonan added.

The strategy would not be for Mattis to win, at least at first—the operatives behind this potential bid would only be seeking to deny Trump and Clinton the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the general election outright. And there is also the incredible logistical challenge of getting Mattis on the ballot in a large number of states.

“The process is actually quite simple, but it’s difficult,” one of the strategists concedes in a memo, and the chances of Mattis winning the White House outright as a third-party candidate are “very low.” But if the retired military officer could win several states won by President Obama in 2012, they might be able to block Clinton, thus forcing the incoming House of Representatives to make a decision on the next president of the United States.

With the House split, the strategists reason, Mattis could be the consensus choice.

“The theme of 2016 is ‘all bets are off’ and this is a cycle where the unexpected has become the defining characteristic of this election,” said strategist Rick Wilson, who is also involved in the project. “In a moment when American politics on the left and right has been upended, and where the frontrunners of both parties are compromised, the time may be upon us where a uniquely qualified, and uniquely credible third-party alternative like General Mattis can take the stage.”

Another limiting factor is Mattis himself, who is disinclined to run. These strategists hope he could change his mind if he were to feel compelled to serve his country.

Those close to him are skeptical that his mind could be changed.

“It is difficult—if not impossible—to see him accepting being drafted,” said a source close to Mattis.

Still, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol poured fuel onto the fire Feb. 22, after Trump victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Speaking at a fundraiser for the Hoover Institute, where Mattis is a visiting fellow, Kristol suggested—perhaps jokingly—that the former four-star general might be conscripted into the race.

“No way!” shouted back a jocular Mattis, from the audience.

Mattis, who declined to speak with The Daily Beast, has previously suggested that he could not endure the political correctness required to be a contender for the White House. But given Trump’s myriad controversies, this may not be a problem this year.

“I’ve lived a very colorful life and I’ve said some things,” Mattis told an audience last year, according to the Marine Corps Times. “But not once have I taken them back, and I’ve never apologized for them—and I won’t. I like the enemy knowing there are a few guys like me around.”

The pro-Mattis donors, who want to stay anonymous for the time being, have assembled a core group of seven political operatives, led by Joel Searby, a Republican consultant based in Florida. The group of strategists also includes lead attorney Mohammad Jazil; ballot access specialist Matthew Sawyer; and former George W. Bush pollster Jan Lohuizen, along with a finance team and a “top firm” that has been secured to lead the ballot access petition gathering, members of the team tell The Daily Beast.

Wilson and Noonan co-authored a memo on how Mattis might capitalize on the current media environment, arguing that Trump’s “fake-macho act falls apart” before a bona fide American hero like Mattis. The general’s overall bearing “immediately blows a hole into the central narrative of Trump: his toughness,” they argue in a memo obtained by The Daily Beast. “[A]nd the drama of watching it fall apart under fire would be amazing television.”

Comparing him to President Dwight Eisenhower, the memo concludes that Mattis has “all the iconoclastic, authentic style of non-politician Trump—and all the serious government service credibility of Hillary Clinton.”

Some conservatives, disgusted with Trump’s candidacy, have already warmed to the idea of a run by Mattis—including conservative commentators Erick Erickson and Kristol.

Kristol told The Daily Beast that he had “huge respect and admiration” for Mattis—and Gen. John Kelly, another high-ranking general.

“I don’t know whether they’re ideally suited for the presidency,” he said. “But I do know they’re a hell of a lot more suited for it than Donald Trump.”

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Sabato: Trump Shifts Six Senate Races Toward Democrats

TWS: The rise of Donald Trump and the general “polarization” of politics have pushed six Senate seats toward the Democrats, according to Larry Sabato and his “Crystal Ball” forecast.

Sabato’s updated forecast bodes particularly ill for Sens. Rob Portman and Pat Toomey, Republicans who are defending their turf in major purple states. Because there is a strong correlation between the success of a presidential candidate and Senate hopefuls of the same party, Sabato argues that the GOP could endanger itself if it nominates a general election candidate unpalatable to the general public.

“Considering the rise of Donald Trump, the polarization in U.S. politics, and a higher rate of straight-ticket voting, this could be bad news for the GOP,” Sabato writes.

“Assuming the GOP nominee for the White House is either Trump or Ted Cruz, we think the Democrats will fare reasonably well down-ballot (more so with Trump than Cruz, though Cruz will also have a difficult time carrying many swing states).”

Portman and Toomey’s seats are now rated as “toss-ups”, a move from “leans Republican”. Sens. Roy Blunt and Richard Burr are now just slight favorites. And even Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa institution and chairman of the committee that oversees judicial nominations, is no longer a sure bet to win a seventh term, though his shift from “safe” to “likely” reelection was made “mostly out of an abundance of caution”, Sabato writes. Grassley has won more than 60 percent of the vote in his five reelection campaigns.

The only seat currently held by Democrats that was reevaluated belongs to Coloradan Michael Bennet. That race moves from “leans Democratic” to “likely Democratic”.

Republicans currently hold the Senate with 54 seats. However, of the 34 Senate races being contested in 2016, Republicans are playing defense in 24 of them.

Islamic State Radio, Just Another App

Posted on April 8, 2016April 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

ISIS taps tech for Web radio

FNC: The Islamic State is harnessing apps and websites in an effort to distribute its radio station, Al-Bayan, via the Internet, the Middle East Media Research Institute warns.

ISIS has released three versions of its radio app on the Android platform, MEMRI says in a report seen by FoxNews.com. The first two were “experimental,” and the most recent version was released in February of this year.

Related:Pro-ISIS hacking group CCA returns to secure messaging app Telegram

MEMRI says that the original links to download these apps were at one point posted on a website called the Internet Archive. A screenshot of the app provided by MEMRI shows a straightforward interface that reportedly gives users the choice between streaming content in either high- or low-quality.

The report also states that ISIS has created six websites to stream its radio content so far, with the most recent version created on April 2. (The first website was launched in July of last year.) The makers of the current version use a service called WhoisGuard to mask information about the site, as well as CloudFlare to protect its website from cyber attacks and to hide details about the server, according to MEMRI.

Related:ISIS made up to $200M last year from seized Palmyra artifacts

WhoisGuard is based in Panama, and CloudFlare has offices in both the United States and abroad.

Speaking to Fox Business last year on a related issue, CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince defended the service, saying that they work with domestic and international law enforcement agencies, and that these agencies actually sometimes prefer that terrorist-related sites use CloudFlare because it can make the sites easier to monitor.

WhoisGuard and the Internet Archive have not yet responded to a request for comment on this story from FoxNews.com.

Related:First-of-its-kind UN conference on violent extremism underway

On the ground, the ISIS radio station, Al-Bayan ( ‘to illustrate’ or ‘to uncover’ in English) is broadcast over FM frequencies in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. The radio station’s topics include religious content and military news. The app version of the Al-Bayan radio station and the Web version of the stations are said to feature the same streaming content.

Islamic State already has local radio and television in the region but now goes global using mobile device apps.

Afghanistan has been part of the reach of the Islamic State media division for several months.

The Afghan reporters recognized the voice threatening them with death on the ISIS group’s local radio station. It was a former colleague, who knows their names and where they work.

The threats were made during a discussion program on “Voice of the Caliphate,” an elusive radio station operated by one of the extremist group’s newest affiliates. The so-called Khorasan Province has battled Afghan forces and the Taliban alike, carving out an enclave in Nangarhar, a rugged eastern province bordering Pakistan.

It has adopted the media strategy of its mother organization in Syria and Iraq, including the production of grisly, professionally made videos showing battles and the killing of captives. But in impoverished Afghanistan, where few have access to the Internet, radio could prove more effective at recruiting fighters and silencing critics.

The group is actively targeting other media outlets to prevent them from competing with its chilling broadcasts. Militants bombed a building housing two radio stations in the provincial capital, Jalalabad, in October, and attacked the local offices of the independent Pajhwok news agency and Voice of America in July.

The menacing broadcast in mid-December, in which a former local radio broadcaster called on reporters to either join ISIS or risk being hunted down and killed, could be heard across Jalalabad.

“It is a great concern for us because he knows all the journalists who are working locally,” said Shir Sha Hamdard, chairman of the Journalists’ Union of Eastern Afghanistan.

“He also knows that as journalists we do not take sides and that our only weapon is the pen. We’ve tried to talk to representatives of ISIS to make sure they know this but we haven’t been successful,” he said. He and other Jalalabad-based reporters asked that The Associated Press not name the ISIS broadcaster for their own safety.

ISIS radio can be heard across Nangarhar on an FM frequency for 90 minutes a day in both the Pashto and Dari languages. Programs include news, interviews, vitriol against the Afghan government and the Taliban, recruitment propaganda, and devotional music in multiple languages.

The message is clear: the Afghan government is a doomed “puppet regime” of the Americans. The Taliban are a spent force hijacked by Pakistan. The caliphate is coming.

“Soon our black flag will be flying over the (presidential) palace in Kabul,” an announcer crowed in a recent broadcast.

The ISIS affiliate “is against everything — free media, civil society, education, all of which they say are secular, un-Islamic,” said Haroon Nasir, a civil society activist in Nangarhar. He said the message likely resonates among young men in impoverished rural areas, where after nearly 15 years of war many have soured on both the U.S.-backed government and the Taliban.

In those areas — which make up most of Afghanistan — Internet access is spotty at best, and computers and smartphones are a luxury. Just 10 percent of Afghanistan’s 30 million people have access to the Internet.

But nearly everyone has a radio.

A 2014 study by Altai Consulting found that 175 radio and 75 television stations had been set up since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban — which had one radio network and banned television. Wind-up radios that operate without electricity or even batteries have been widely distributed since then.

ISIS militants are believed to use mobile broadcasting units and cross back and forth along the porous border with Pakistan, making them difficult to track. The National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency, did not respond to requests for comment.

Hazrat Hussain Mashriqiwal, the spokesman for the Nangarhar police chief, said “Voice of the Caliphate” broadcasts had been banned and were rarely picked up, especially in Jalalabad.

But residents tell a different story. Jalalabad shopkeeper Janat Khan said ISIS radio is popular chiefly due to its novelty. “Most people are listening to them because they want to know about Daesh and its strategy,” he said, referring to the extremist group by its Arabic acronym. “The preachers are strong, their message is clear — they talk against the Taliban and against (President Ashraf) Ghani’s government.”

Although ISIS and the Taliban both want to impose a harsh version of Islamic rule, they are bitterly divided over leadership and strategy, with the Taliban narrowly focused on Afghanistan and ISIS bent on establishing a worldwide caliphate.

The U.S. State Department recently added the ISIS Afghan affiliate to its list of foreign terrorist organizations. It said the group emerged in January 2015 and is mainly made up of disenchanted former Taliban fighters.

Over the last six months the group has taken over four Nangarhar districts, where it has imposed the same violent interpretation of Islamic law championed by the ISIS group in Syria and Iraq, including the public execution of alleged informers and other enemies. In August, students at Nangarhar University staged a pro-ISIS demonstration. Security forces swooped in to make arrests and have since cracked down on campus activism nationwide.

As the group has expanded its reach, its media strategy has grown more sophisticated and more brutal.

“They have not only made every attempt to promote themselves through all mediums from mainstream media to social media, but they have also resorted to coercing tactics to force local media to publish their news and follow their agenda,” said Najib Sharifi, director of the Afghan Journalists’ Safety Committee.

“In areas where the government cannot provide sufficient security, media might resort to compromising their editorial independence out of fear — something that could make media turn into the propaganda machinery of Daesh.”

Guzman, Miami Laundering Pesos: Operation Neymar

Posted on April 8, 2016April 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

And so it continues the underworld of the cartels with money laundering through Miami.

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22 face charges in Miami drug money-laundering ring involving ‘El Chapo’ cartel

Police say the sophisticated schemes moved millions of illegal profits to Colombia

The large-scale probe into the “black market peso exchange” is a first for state prosecutors

The arrests come amid global scrutiny on financial transactions, including in South Florida

MiamiHerald: A sophisticated ring of money launderers — with an array of pop cultural nicknames like “Tony Montana,” “Pitbull” and “Neymar” — has been busted on charges of sending untold millions in illegal cocaine profits to Colombia using nearly a dozen businesses in Miami-Dade.

Miami-Dade authorities announced arrest warrants for 22 people believed to have worked in a scheme that included the suspected chief money launderer for the Mexican drug cartel headed by notorious kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

The wide-reaching probe into the so-called “black market peso exchange” — which involved monitoring deals in 17 countries — is the first such case to be filed in Miami-Dade state court, and offers the most recent window into the drug-fueled underground lending system that law enforcement authorities believe props up hundreds of South Florida businesses.

Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle talks about the disruption of an international money-laundering ring during a press conference, Thursday on Operation Neymar. DANIEL BOCK FOR THE MIAMI HERALD

A chart from the press conference held by Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle showing how an international money-laundering ring works. DANIEL BOCK FOR THE MIAMI HERALD

Agents seized $134,980 in cash in Chicago in August 2015 as part of a wide-ranging money-laundering investigation that lead to criminal charges against 18 people being filed in Miami-Dade County. Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office

“They use Miami’s strong international economy as the actual funnel of all of their international money-laundering operations,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle told reporters at a press conference on Thursday. ‘We are surely the global hub for money laundering.”

Three people were arrested in Miami this week, while another major player has been jailed in Cali, Colombia, to await extradition to the United States. One more was arrested in Boston. In all, 18 people — most remain fugitives — will be tried in Miami-Dade, with the rest being tried in other U.S. cities.

The two-year probe — dubbed Operation Neymar because one suspect used the name of the Brazilian soccer star and other players as his aliases — was conducted by agents from the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations, Miami-Dade police and state prosecutors. As part of the investigation, undercover agents laundered a “small fraction” of drug proceeds to build evidence against the group, prosecutors said.

The operation stands in stark contrast to the now disgraced and disbanded money-laundering sting unit run by Bal Harbour Police, which by 2012 had laundered millions for cartels but never made any arrests.

The arrests also come as the “Panama Papers” and other investigations have put intense scrutiny on financial shenanigans in South Florida real estate — leading the County Commission to pass a resolution this week asking the federal government to stop singling out Miami as a hub for money laundering.

Prosecutors say Operation Neymar — which netted more than $1 million in seized drug cash — proves that major drug money laundering is still thriving in Miami.

According to them, one of the major players in the group was Mexican Sinaloa Cartel member Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, 34, who was arrested by Mexican authorities last month. He is suspected of laundering billions of dollars of drug proceeds.

He is now awaiting extradition to the United States, where he will first stand trial on federal charges in San Diego. For now, he has not been charged in the Miami-Dade case.

The two big players being charged are suspected money-laundering brokers for the cartel in Cali, Colombia: Ivan Alfredo Castro Santana and Ivan Andres Lizarazo Mendoza, who was nearly kidnapped and killed by the Colombian cartel after police in Miami seized $200,000 in drug money.

They are being charged with racketeering and money laundering. Lizarazo’s sister in Miami, Sidia Milady Lizarazo Mendoza, is also accused of money laundering and is now being held on a $1 million bond in a Miami-Dade jail.

Prosecutors say the group used throwaway Blackberry phones, employing ever-changing pass codes that, in English, seem nonsensical. One example: “Con mollo departe del panzon” – or “with the dark-skinned one, on behalf of the potbellied.”

To unravel the money-laundering operation — which was washing about $1 million a month — investigators used wiretaps, surveillance, reviews of thousands of financial transactions and cooperation from informants, according to an arrest warrant by HSI agent Charles Thomas, Miami-Dade Detective Jonathan Santana and prosecutor Jared Nixon.

Money laundering, of course, is nothing new in South Florida. And while drugs don’t flow into the United States through Florida in the volume they did in the 1980s, Miami remains the main hub for laundering the illicit profits.

The reason: So many businesses here, particularly in Doral, do business with Colombia. In April 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a warning to 700 Miami businesses believed to be involved in laundering drug money.

According to law enforcement, the black-market peso exchange requires a number of steps to launder drug proceeds.

The Mexican cartels use credit to buy loads of cocaine from their counterparts in Colombia. The drugs are smuggled into the United States, then routed to cities across the country where they are sold to dealers who peddle them to users.

The resulting millions in drug dollars, temporarily stored in “stash houses,” must then be converted to pesos for the Colombian cartel.

So the cartel employs a money broker know as the primera mano, or first hand, who arranges to buy U.S. dollars in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. He, in turn, puts out a “bid” — all arranged through covert Blackberry text messages — for sub-brokers willing to buy the dollars.

Sub-brokers then turn to Colombian businesses that need U.S. dollars to buy goods or services from the United States. For those businesses — say a Bogotá electronics store needing to buy U.S. cellphones — it’s way cheaper to buy dollars from the black market than through official Colombian channels that charge high exchange rates, plus hefty taxes and fees.

A Bogotá business might place an order with a Miami distributor for a load of phones, makeup or textiles, telling them their payment will arrive via a wire transfer from an unnamed “third party.”

“If as a business you are receiving funds or interacting with third parties that are alien to your business transaction, you’re in the middle of a black-market scheme,” said John Tobon, South Florida’s HSI Deputy Special Agent in Charge.

Investigators believe most Miami companies involved in the black-market peso exchange have a general idea of what’s going on — but ask no questions. In Operation Neymar, prosecutors identified, but did not charge, 11 local businesses, including M2 Wireless of Doral, Dis Cells Corporation of Miami Beach and Hair and Accessories of Opa-locka.

“Pick-up crews” are hired to get the cash from couriers, always in mundane public spots, the money stuffed in shopping bags, backpacks or shoe boxes. In the newly charged case, some of the pick-up spots included a Starbucks in Doral, a parking lot at the Dolphin Mall and a Dunkin’ Donuts in New Jersey, prosecutors said.

The next step: The pick-up crew begins depositing the cash into a “funnel” bank account, all in small increments to avoid attention from law enforcement. Those accounts then wire the money to the Miami business, which in turn sends its goods such as cellphones to the Colombian business.

Back in Colombia, that legitimate business pays back its pesos to the brokers, who can finally pass the money to the cartel.

It Continues, Panama Papers Proves the Elite’s Dark World

Posted on April 7, 2016April 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

Panama Papers: How German Biz May Have Empowered Venezuela to Forge Passports for Hezbollah

The massive legal firm data leak known as the Panama Papers have exposed business dealings that allowed the government of Venezuela under Hugo Chávez to use Cuban money to purchase advanced passport technology from Germany. Venezuela would later be accused of falsifying passports for Hezbollah terrorists.

Breitbart: The revelation surfaced as part of the 11.5 million documents leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, later handed over for aid in analysis to a number of journalistic outlets, most prominently the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The ICIJ has set up a website to help parse the information in these documents, and one website specifically for the revelations surfacing on the government of Venezuela.

It is there that the ICIJ has revealed in a Spanish-language report that Mossack Fonseca helped the governments of Cuba and Venezuela establish a shell corporation to engage a German technology company to buy state-of-the-art passport printing technology.

According to the report, late dictator Hugo Chávez established a project in 2005 to update the Venezuelan passport system, which would first require identifying a seller of the appropriate technology to approach. Venezuela, then as now, enjoying patronage from the government in Havana, would use Cuban money to buy the new technology. This made the purchase much more difficult, as few respectable corporations would feel comfortable doing business with the communist dictatorship.

Venezuela found a vendor: the German company Bundesdrukerei. In an email surfacing as part of the Panama Papers, a representative of that corporation makes clear: “the fundamental reason why this company does not want to sell to Cuba and Venezuela directly is because of the reputational issue. They fear their competition will create adversarial propaganda against them for selling to totalitarian governments.”

Mossack Fonseca then stepped in to design an elaborate currency exchange system to disassociate Cuba with the funding, a system known in Latin America as a “financial bicycle,” because the money is peddled through so many different currencies as to render its origins barely recognizable. Many corporations use this system to generate income, switching into cheaper currencies with higher interest rates and waiting for the money to grow before returning the money to its original form. In this case, Mossack Fonseca cycled the money through the currencies of at least four countries in addition to Cuba and Venezuela, then put the money in a shell corporation: Billingsley Global Corp. Billingsley bought the technology after receiving an influx of 64 million euros.

Venezuela got its passports, and Cuba retained the right to access and control the software that creates the passports.

Like most of the known revelations in the Pentagon Papers, this exchange is of questionable legality at worst, completely acceptable for a global banking lawyer at best. What makes this particular discovery notable is the years of evidence mounting that Venezuela and Cuba used the Venezuelan passport system to fabricate false documents for Hezbollah terrorists.

A 2015 report estimated that the government of Venezuela has issued over 500 passports to members of the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah. The terrorists would then use the passports to travel more freely through the Western Hemisphere, as their real identities and nationalities would trigger more thorough investigations into their backgrounds. Spanish reporter Emili Blasco found evidence that current Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2007 to discuss an agreement for distributing the fake passports.

A former diplomat in Venezuela’s Baghdad embassy, Misael López Soto, testified before fleeing the embassy in a video posted online that he was forced to flee after receiving multiple death threats for attempting to notify Caracas that his embassy was distributing dozens of falsified birth certificates, passports, and other government documents to known members of Hezbollah. The terrorists would pay between $5000 and S15000 for each document.

A report in February at the UK-based Asharq Al-Awsat cited a former Venezuelan diplomat as alleging that a “Cuban company” had made an agreement with Venezuela to issue the contracts. No details were provided, but such an agreement fits the Panama Papers description of the incident.

The governments of either nation have yet to remark on this particular allegation.

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The Dark Art World, remember the movie the Monuments Men? Seems the art that was looted but some was never recovered or was it?

This is a long yet quite detailed summary of the art world where owner’s names are never mentioned or buried in layers of obscure companies all performed by the Mossack Fonseca law firm. Below are but a few paragraphs. To read the whole summary, go here.

Panama Papers provides unprecedented look at connection between international art trade and offshore secrecy
Billionaire art dealers use offshore company to shield painting allegedly looted by Nazis
Identity revealed of the man secretly behind the 20th century’s most important modern art auction

ICIJ in part: When high-dollar art changes hands, it often lands in a free trade zone known as a freeport. As long as art is housed in the freeport, owners pay no import taxes or duties. Critics worry the freeport system can be used to dodge tax or launder money since precise inventories and transactions are not tracked. According to the international professional services firm Deloitte, 42 percent of art collectors it surveyed said they would likely use a freeport. The oldest freeport, with the most art, is in Geneva. Its complex of storage facilities is said to contain enough treasure to rival any museum in the world.

The Nahmads began as a banking dynasty of Sephardic Jews from Aleppo, Syria. In 1948, Hillel Nahmad relocated his wife and eight children to Beirut.

Three of his sons — Giuseppe, David and Ezra — eventually moved to Milan and, by the early 1960s, had become active art dealers. Giuseppe, the patriarch of the family, had a taste for expensive sports cars and, according to his brother David, once dated Rita Hayworth. He also pioneered treating the art business like a stock market, buying and holding paintings until exactly the right time to sell to maximize profit.

He died in 2012. David assumed the mantel of family leader. He and his older brother Ezra both named their sons Hillel after their grandfather. The two sons both go by Helly. Together the four continue the family business.

The two surviving brothers are worth a combined $3.3 billion, according to Forbes. They live in Monaco, among other locales. In addition to currency trading and art dealing, David Nahmad is also a championship backgammon player. Each son has a namesake gallery. Ezra’s son has the Helly Nahmad Gallery in London and David’s offspring, an identically named one in New York.

The Mossack Fonseca records indicate the Nahmads were early adopters of the benefits of offshoring art.

Fine art dealer and billionaire David Nahmad. Photo: AP Photo / Lionel Cironneau

Giuseppe Nahmad registered International Art Center S.A. in 1995 through the Swiss bank UBS and the Geneva office of Mossack Fonseca. It may have existed in another form prior to that date. A document in the Mossack Fonseca files mentions International Art Center acquiring the pastel “Danseuses” by Edgar Degas in October 1989.

Candidates Proposals Makes the Tax Man Happy

Posted on April 7, 2016April 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

The big question remains in the end of these summaries, Kasich’s is not included, yet will the tax code really ever receive an overhaul? Not likely given the $20 trillion in debt which does not include any part of the unfunded mandates.

Stipulation, these summaries are not GAO graded or confirmed if candidates have changed any parts.

An analysis of Donald Trump’s tax plan from the Tax Policy Center (as summarized by the WSJ):

AEI: Donald Trump’s tax plan would cut federal revenue by $9.5 trillion over a decade and boost the after-tax incomes of the wealthiest households by an average of more than $1.3 million a year, according to an analysis released Tuesday. Mr. Trump’s plan, which would cut tax rates and push millions of households off the income tax rolls, would reduce federal revenue by 22%, requiring either significant new borrowing or unprecedented spending cuts. … “The revenue losses from this plan are really enormous,” said Leonard Burman, director of the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which released the study. A bipartisan panel reviewed the report before its release. Mr. Trump’s website says his plan would be revenue-neutral. The center’s analysis shows otherwise.

Actually the red ink is worse than the WSJ piece would suggest. From the study itself:

The revenue loss during the second decade (2027–36) would be more than half again the first decade’s loss (in nominal terms)—a projected $15.0 trillion. The revenue losses understate the total effect on the national debt because they do not include the additional interest that would accrue as a result. Including interest costs, the proposal would add $11.2 trillion to the national debt by 2026 and $34.1 trillion by 2036. Assuming the tax cuts are not offset by spending cuts, the national debt would rise by an estimated 39 percent of GDP in 2026 and by nearly 80 percent of GDP by 2036.

And don’t expect economic growth to bail out the plan. Recall that the Tax Foundation analysis of the Trump plan found it losing $12 trillion on a static basis, $10 trillion when accounting for economic feedback — still a huuuge number.

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The Hillary Bernie tax base showdown

Soak-the-rich proposals ignore history and wouldn’t raise nearly enough money to fund big spending plans.

ManhattanInstitute: Here is a question to ask Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders: What is the best tax rate to impose on high-income earners to ensure there is enough government revenue to pay for your trillion-dollar promises to voters?

Perhaps they think it is 83%, a rate that economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saezhypothesized in 2014 in a widely circulated paper. Or maybe it is 90%, which Sen. Sanders told CNBC last May was not out of the question. “Our job is not to think small,” Mr. Sanders elaborated in the Huffington Post a month later. “It is to think big.”

Progressives have often reminded us that the U.S. had such rates in the past. From 1936 to 1980, the highest federal income-tax rate was never below 70%, and the top rate exceeded 90% from 1951 to 1963. Under Ronald Reagan, the top federal rate declined to 28% by 1988 and has never reached 40% since.

The discussion of these rates can easily create the impression that the federal government collected far more money from “the rich” before the Reagan administration. And it can also leave another impression: There would be no downside to raising rates to 1950s levels, given that decade’s prosperity.

Neither impression would be correct. The effective tax rates actually paid by the highest income earners during the 1950s and early ’60s were far lower than the highest marginal rates. Few taxpayers reached the top brackets, the code was rife with loopholes, and capital gains were taxed at much lower rates.

In the 1960s, for example, the average rate paid by the top 0.1% of tax filers—the top 10th of the top 1%—ranged from 26.5% to 29.5%, according to a 2007 study by Messrs. Piketty and Saez. Even during the 20 years after the Reagan tax cuts, the top 10th of the top 1% paid an average rate of 23.7% to 33%—essentially the same as in the 1960s. In the decade following 2001, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the average rate for this elite group never exceeded 32%.

Nostalgia aside for a world that never existed, few people paid the top tax rates of the 1950s and early 1960s…

Read the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal

Then there is the Cruz plan.

WSJ: The Cruz plan would replace payroll and corporate income taxes with a 10% individual income tax and a 16% business tax that would become the chief U.S. revenue source. Like his GOP rivals, Mr. Cruz offers sizable tax cuts and a shift toward taxing consumption instead of income. But he goes further. By eliminating long-standing taxes, Mr. Cruz’s plan could change consumer prices and relationships between workers and employers now shaped by those levies.

Forecasting how this shift would ripple through the economy depends on assumptions about who pays those taxes now and who would bear the burden of the new tax.

“It’s one of the most complicated questions in economics,” said Martin Sullivan, chief economist at Tax Analysts, publisher of Tax Notes. “Every time you start talking about these incidences, it’s like a whack-a-mole thing. You talk about one thing and it comes out the other side.”

Mr. Cruz’s biggest change is, in some ways, a simple reshuffling of existing taxes.

The U.S. now taxes corporate profits at 35%. Companies deduct wages immediately but spread capital expenses over time. The cost is absorbed by shareholders and workers.

The 12.4% Social Security payroll tax is split evenly between workers and employers up to $118,500 in wages. A separate Medicare tax has no cap. Economists consider employees to bear the whole payroll-tax burden.

What Mr. Cruz calls a business flat tax—and economists call a subtraction-method value-added tax—simply combines corporate and payroll taxes. Businesses would deduct capital purchases immediately and pay a 16% rate without deducting wages. Removing the current cap effectively enlarges the payroll tax for high-income workers. More here.