Government Corruption and Treason

Senators OK Defense Budget Bill, Much Left to 2010

Senate sends $626 billion Pentagon budget bill to Obama; includes unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, health care subsidies for those out of work, highway and transit money, and parts of the terrorism-fighting Patriot Act.

December 20, 2009

Associated Press - The Senate cleared its year-end plate of some must-do work Saturday as it passed a critical budget bill that blends money for the Pentagon with additional help for the jobless.

The early morning 88-10 vote, taken as a blizzard buffeted the Capitol, permitted lawmakers to resume their acrimonious debate on health care, which Democrats now expect to finish by Christmas. The spending measure now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.

It wraps up work on perhaps Congress' most fundamental job: funding the annual budgets of Cabinet agencies and the rest of the government.

But the $626 billion defense bill measure also demonstrated the failings of a Congress unable to address many of its most pressing tasks, such as passing a highway bill and making sure doctors don't absorb a 21 percent hit in Medicare payments. In a boon for the wealthy, the estate tax temporarily will expire Jan. 1, even as people inheriting smaller amounts will face larger capital gains bills.

Having run out of time and patience, Democrats used the must-pass Pentagon measure to drag along several two-month extensions of expiring legislation. They include unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, health care subsidies for those out of work, highway and transit money and parts of the terrorism-fighting Patriot Act.

Resolving those issues in February would clutter next year's agenda as Obama's Democratic allies turn to trying to rein in the spiraling budget deficit and passing his upcoming request for additional troops in Afghanistan, which promises to be a very difficult task.

The impressive vote Saturday was evidence of the broad support for paying for troops fighting overseas and other elements of the Pentagon budget. The path to that point, however, was poisoned with partisanship as Republicans sought to derail the measure in an effort to stretch out action on health care past Christmas...

A Christmas eve vote looms on the health care bill. After that, the Senate also must deal with one other politically sensitive measure: raising the $12.1 trillion debt ceiling by $290 billion so the Treasury can continue to borrow to keep the government running and avoid a first-ever default on U.S. obligations.

The defense bill, which contains $128 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and a 3.4 percent pay raise for the military, enjoyed wide support. Just nine Republicans opposed pork barrel projects and some of the add-ons voted against the bill, as did anti-war Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin...

Exclusive: IRS Hires "Hundreds" for New Wealth Unit

December 11, 2009

Reuters - A new Internal Revenue Service unit set up to catch rich tax cheats hiding their wealth in complex business entities is rapidly taking shape with the hiring of hundreds of employees.

The IRS high wealth unit, part of a broader effort to combat international tax evasion, is focusing on "the entire web of business entities controlled by a high wealth individual," IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told a tax conference this week.

Another IRS official told Reuters "hundreds" of people have already been hired to staff the new unit, including some from within the agency.

"We have drawn top talent within the IRS that have expertise involving wealthy individuals as well as examination of their related entities," said Mae Lew, an IRS special counsel.

The high-wealth unit is focusing on trusts, real estate investments, privately-held companies and other business entities controlled by rich individuals.

While use of sophisticated legal structures can be legal, in other instances they "mask aggressive tax strategies," Shulman said.

Tax authorities in Japan, Germany and the UK have also created similar units.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a $387 million boost for the IRS for the fiscal year that started October 1, in part to fund the high-wealth unit. The Senate is expected to vote on the measure on Sunday...

Obama’s War Surtax On the Productive

December 3, 2009

David Galland - ... Two top Democrats say they want to impose a new tax on the wealthy to finance any increase in U.S. troops for the Afghanistan war.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the purse string-controlling House Appropriations Committee, is calling the idea a "war surtax." He said that just as the federal government is expected to pay for its proposed intervention in the health care sector with new taxes, any escalated involvement in Afghanistan should come with a payment plan.

"If we have to pay for the health care bill, we should pay for the war as well ... by having a war surtax," Obey told ABC News in an interview that aired Monday. "The problem in this country with this issue is that the only people that has to sacrifice are military families and they've had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war."

Readers of my free missive, Casey’s Daily Dispatch, know I’m vehemently opposed to the doomed adventure in Afghanistan. On that front alone, the idea of a war tax is like a shard of glass in my eye.

But it’s even worse than that. It shows just how degraded this country has become – picking the pockets of the productive is now pretty much the only remaining source of funding the administration and its allies can imagine.

Just to be sure we keep this in perspective: At this moment, if you earn more than $250,000 a year (which isn’t what it used to be, given the steady erosion of inflation over the last 30 years), you will pay federal income taxes of about 35%, no estate taxes, and a 15% capital gains tax should the money you put at risk in the market return a profit.

As soon as next year – if the government moves up the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, as I very much expect them to – the top tax bracket will go to 39%. On top of that, the current healthcare legislation will add a 5.4% surcharge. Then, add in the Democrats’ proposed 5% war tax. So straight up we’re talking 49%.

Then there’s a near doubling of capital gains taxes, from 15% to as high as 28%. And, of course, the return of the estate tax.

But that’s just for starters, because everywhere you look states and municipalities are raising taxes and fees, and attorney generals, taking a page out of Caligula’s playbook, are casting about for their next deep-pocketed victim.

At the end of the day, the top tax rate in the U.S., starting as early as next year, will soar way over 50% of income. While further number crunching is required, it is a very safe assumption that top income earners will soon be paying over 65% of their income in taxes.

Which is to say, if you are in a top tax bracket, every penny you earn between January 1 and August 25 will go straight into the coffers of one layer of government or another.

And this while more than 40% of Americans pay no income taxes at all.

This is just another symptom of the single biggest problem now facing the U.S. (and for that matter, the world): the ballooning size and cost of government. And there are no speed bumps in sight...

Chelsea Clinton Engaged to Goldman Sachs' Marc Mezvinsky

November 30, 2009

Huffington Post - Chelsea Clinton is engaged to her longtime boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky, a spokesman for former President Clinton told ABC News. People magazine got a hold of the couple's email to friends and family sharing the news. They're planning to wed next summer.

Engagement rumors were swirling earlier this year; Hillary Clinton shot them down in July.

"He's great. He's a great human being," Bill Clinton said of his future son-in-law.

Mezvinsky works at Goldman Sachs; his parents are both former members of Congress. His father pleaded guilty in 2002 to swindling dozens of investors out of $10 million after getting caught up in a Nigerian scam. Interestingly, his mother lost her seat in a conservative congressional district after one term in part because she chose to vote for President Clinton's first budget.

The couple became friends as teenagers in Washington and both attended Stanford University. They now live in New York, where Mezvinsky works and Clinton is attending graduate school at Columbia University's School of Public Health.

EU: CIA Pulls SWIFT One to Get Peek at Your Bank Records

November 30, 2009

Press TV - European Union governments have given in to the pressure and appear set to make a last-minute agreement with the United States to allow its intelligence agencies to monitor bank accounts and transactions across the bloc.

Actually, the EU has been clandestinely allowing US intelligence agencies to have access to these financial records since 2001, allegedly to fight terrorism.

However, EU citizens were outraged when this invasion of privacy was revealed in 2006.

Now, however, interior ministers and security officials of the 27-member bloc are going to meet on November 30 to make a decision on legally allowing the United States to have access to bank data across the EU.

According to Spiegel Online, the EU interior ministers gradually succumbed to the “massive” pressure exerted by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US ambassadors in Europe, who pressed governments like door-to-door salespeople.

“They pulled out all the moral and political stops,” one EU foreign minister quipped.

Germany was initially opposed to the agreement but came around this week, and a recalcitrant Austria, one of the last holdouts, followed suit.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, who is from the new coalition government, told German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberg, who belongs to the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), that he would not block the US proposal in Brussels.

There will not be a German “no” vote, but instead, he will simply abstain, Spiegel Online reported.

In what many Europeans say is a surreptitious move, the final decision on the issue is going to be made one day before the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect on December 1, since the treaty would allow the European Parliament to have a say in the matter.

However, the issue will definitely face opposition in the EU Parliament anyway since a majority of MEPs are opposed to the idea of disclosing the bank data to the US.

The new treaty envisages a host of security measures and has paved the way for many inexperienced but obedient people like Catherine Ashton, a former EU commissioner for trade, to be elevated to the very apex of European politics.

Many analysts view the entire process as an attempt by Washington to realize its security goals.

The US involvement in the EU's banking system started after it illegally got its hands on the private bank data via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication or SWIFT.

Over 8,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries are affiliated with SWIFT. The cooperative organization is not a bank and it lacks funds but operates a network of international financial messages.

The firm is registered in Belgium but one of its two major computer servers is located in the US.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the White House decided to intercept the bank data of people suspected of involvement in terrorist activities via the SWIFT server in the US.

The CIA, the FBI, the US government, and major banks all put pressure on SWIFT until the organization “voluntarily” began to hand over millions of pieces of data.

Privacy advocates and liberal politicians are opposed to the “SWIFT agreement” because it would give US intelligence agencies access to the personal information and financial records of all EU citizens.