Opponents of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, have now brought on one of America’s top constitutional lawyers to lead the fight, Attorney Jim Bopp

• The New American

Critics Mount Constitutional Attack on Dreaded FATCA Tax Regime

Written by  Alex Newman

As the implementation deadline looms large for a deeply controversial new tax regime adopted largely by congressional Democrats and the Obama administration, critics of the measure are mounting a constitutional challenge, saying the scheme is wildly unconstitutional and must be struck down. Opponents of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, have now brought on one of America’s top constitutional lawyers to lead the fight. In his initial analysis, the heavyweight attorney concluded that the sprawling addition to the U.S. tax code violates multiple provisions of the Constitution and, as such, must come down.
Faced with what even compliance mongers have said would be a “train wreck” on July 1, the day full enforcement of FATCA was supposed to begin following previous unilateral delays by the Obama administration, the IRS and the U.S. Treasury recently announced a “transition period” extending into 2015. According to the opaque announcement, the federal government will delay imposing harsh penalties on banks for now — as long as authorities believe they are trying in “good faith” to comply with the byzantine new tax regime. In other words: more lawlessness.
If opponents of the scheme get their way, however, it may all be a moot point. Attorney Jim Bopp — described by analysts as a “superlawyer” for his role in the Supreme Court striking down other unconstitutional statutes such as McCain-Feingold — announced that he was taking up the case. In an interview with the Washington Times and other statements, Bopp, who is working with the group Republicans Overseas to kill the scheme, outlined three primary constitutional problems with FATCA and the related Foreign Bank Account Report (FABR).

“It is our preliminary opinion that the potentially meritorious claims are a violation of the treaty power, an 8th Amendment Excessive Fines Claim, and a 4th Amendment Search and Seizure Claim,” Bopp said in a statement posted online by Republicans Overseas. “We do not believe that a claim based on an unconstitutional delegation of Congressional power has merit. We believe that these three claims form the basis for a successful suit that would stop the damage that FATCA and FBAR have inflicted on U.S. citizens.”
First of all, because the Treasury is unilaterally signing unauthorized pseudo-treaties with foreign governments to violate privacy rights, the Senate’s constitutionally mandated role in ratifying treaties has been usurped. Numerous other experts have made the same argument, as The New American magazine reported in a major report on FATCA published last month. Already, without any purported authority to do so from the Constitution, or the FATCA statute itself, dozens of such “agreements” to gather and share private financial information have been signed with foreign rulers.
According to Bopp, the FATCA statute also violates two of the unalienable rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Under the Fourth Amendment, privacy is supposed to be protected and the government needs a warrant to infringe on it. FATCA, though, takes the opposite approach, indiscriminately gathering sensitive information on everyone in an NSA-style dragnet for perusal by authorities. Multiple foreign governments have been coerced by the Obama administration to undo their own protections for privacy rights in an effort to comply with FATCA.
Finally, the Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, as well as excessive fines, might also represent a viable avenue for challenging FATCA and related schemes. Under the emerging tax regime, Americans abroad who for whatever reason have not complied perfectly with unimaginably complex IRS demands can be hit with crippling penalties and fines that in some cases could literally threaten the life savings of entire families. Critics say that must end; and experts believe the courts might be inclined to agree. Most U.S. expats were not even aware of the purported IRS requirements that now threaten their financial survival.

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The Obama Administration issues simultaneous threats to the enemy it is making out of Russia and to its European NATO allies

Barack Obama
Author  :  Elizabeth Cromwell
A/SA - 3.0 Unported


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Obama Issues Threats To Russia And NATO — Paul Craig Roberts

April 6, 2014  

Obama Issues Threats To Russia And NATO
Paul Craig Roberts
The Obama regime has issued simultaneous threats to the enemy it is making out of Russia and to its European NATO allies on which Washington is relying to support sanctions on Russia. This cannot end well.
As even Americans living in a controlled media environment are aware, Europeans, South Americans, and Chinese are infuriated that the National Stasi Agency is spying on their communications. NSA’s affront to legality, the US Constitution, and international diplomatic norms is unprecedented. Yet, the spying continues, while Congress sits sucking its thumb and betraying its oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.
In Washington mumbo-jumbo from the executive branch about “national security” suffices to negate statutory law and Constitutional requirements. Western Europe, seeing that the White House, Congress and the Federal Courts are impotent and unable to rein-in the Stasi Police State, has decided to create a European communication system that excludes US companies in order to protect the privacy of European citizens and government communications from the Washington Stasi.
The Obama regime, desperate that no individual and no country escape its spy net, denounced Western Europe’s intention to protect the privacy of its communications as “a violation of trade laws.”
Obama’s US Trade Representative, who has been negotiating secret “trade agreements” in Europe and Asia that give US corporations immunity to the laws of all countries that sign the agreements, has threatened WTO penalties if Europe’s communications network excludes the US companies that serve as spies for NSA. Washington in all its arrogance has told its most necessary allies that if you don’t let us spy on you, we will use WTO to penalize you.
So there you have it. The rest of the world now has the best possible reason to exit the WTO and to avoid the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic “trade agreements.” The agreements are not about trade. The purpose of these “trade agreements” is to establish the hegemony of Washington and US corporations over other countries.
In an arrogant demonstration of Washington’s power over Europe, the US Trade Representative warned Washington’s NATO allies: “US Trade Representative will be carefully monitoring the development of any such proposals” to create a separate European communication network. http://rt.com/news/us-europe-nsa-snowden-549/
Washington is relying on the Chancellor of Germany, the President of France, and the Prime Minister of the UK to place service to Washington above their countries’ communications privacy.
It has dawned on the Russian government that being a part of the American dollar system means that Russia is open to being looted by Western banks and corporations or by individuals financed by them, that the ruble is vulnerable to being driven down by speculators in the foreign exchange market and by capital outflows, and that dependence on the American international payments system exposes Russia to arbitrary sanctions imposed by the “exceptional and indispensable country.”

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• Obama Issues Threats To Russia And NATO - Paul Craig Roberts

Healthcare cuts canceled amid election-year opposition from congressional Democrats.

April 07, 2014, 05:15 pm

Healthcare cuts canceled after Dem complaints

By Jonathan Easley

Getty Images

The Obama administration announced Monday that planned cuts to Medicare Advantage would not go through as anticipated amid election-year opposition from congressional Democrats.
The cuts would have reduced benefits that seniors receive from health plans in the program, which is intended as an alternative to Medicare.
Under cuts planned by the administration, insurers offering the plans were to see their federal payments reduced by 1.9 percent, which likely would have necessitated cuts for customers.
Instead, the administration said the federal payments to insurers will increase next year by .40 percent.
The healthcare law included $200 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage over 10 years, in part to pay for ObamaCare.
The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) on Monday said changes in the healthcare market meant it did not need to make those cuts to Medicare Advantage this year.
It cited an increase in healthy beneficiaries under Medicare, which it said has lowered projected costs for that program.
CMS separately is delaying a risk assessment proposal that was set to take affect under ObamaCare.

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Obama administration proposes 1.9% cut in Medicare Advantage payments

February 21, 2014 8:08 pm by Mary Agnes Carey

Medicare Advantage plans could see payment reductions of 1.9 percent next year under proposed rates announced Friday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Insurers, who have led a fierce lobbying campaign against payment reductions, have said the combination of the health law’s lower payment rates, new fees on health plans and other factors, including automatic federalspending cuts known as "sequestration," mean that Medicare Advantage plans will see their Medicare payment rates drop by 6 percent – or even more -- in 2015.
CMS said Friday its preliminary estimate is "the combined effect of the Medicare Advantage growth percentage and the fee-for-service growth percentage."
America's Health Insurance Plans said they are reviewing the details of the announcement to determine the total impact of the federal payment rates. In a statement, AHIP President and CEO Karen Ignagni was critical of the proposed rates, saying, "The new proposed Medicare Advantage cuts would cause seniors in the program to lose benefits and choices on which they depend."

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• Capitol Hill Blue

Obama flip-flops on Medicare drug coverage

By DAVID MORGAN
March 11, 2014

(REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman)

The Obama administration, in an abrupt about-face, said on Monday it would drop proposed changes to Medicare drug coverage that met wide opposition on grounds they would harm health benefits for the elderly and disabled.
Late last week, more than 370 organizations representing insurers, drug makers, pharmacies, health providers and patients urged the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to withdraw changes it had proposed for Medicare Part D.
One of the federal government’s most successful and cost-effective healthcare programs, Part D provides drug benefits for the elderly and disabled through private insurers to 36 million enrollees.
Critics said the changes, if adopted in coming months, could not only undermine Part D benefits but impact drug benefits available through Medicare Advantage, a program that allows Medicare beneficiaries to obtain their major medical coverage through private insurers.
“Given the complexities of these issues and stakeholder input, we do not plan to finalize these proposals at this time. We will engage in further stakeholder input before advancing some or all of the changes in these areas in future years,” CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner advised in a letter sent on Monday to members of the Senate and House of Representatives.
The proposals were opposed by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The Republican Party had already begun to look for ways to leverage popular anger over the changes into campaign attacks on Democratic incumbents who could be vulnerable in November’s election showdown for control of Congress.
Elated critics of the proposed changes said the government had effectively agreed to start over in the face of broad, bipartisan opposition.

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New York Times SundayReview

Fear Mongering With Medicare

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMARCH 1, 2014

The Obama administration’s proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage plans — the private insurance plans that cover almost 30 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries — are fair and reasonable. As it happens, they are also mandated by law. Yet Republicans, sensing a campaign issue, are telling older and disabled Americans that the administration is “raiding Medicare Advantage to pay for Obamacare.” The health insurance industry, for its part, is warning that enrollees will suffer higher premiums, lower benefits and fewer choices among doctors if the cuts go into force.

Some of this could in fact happen, although the industry has cried wolf before and continues to thrive. But the key point is this: Over the past decade, enrollees in Medicare Advantage have received lots of extra benefits, thanks to unjustified federal subsidies to the insurance companies. Now they will have to do with somewhat less, unless the insurers are willing to absorb the cuts while maintaining benefits. Enrollment in these private plans, offered by companies like UnitedHealth and Humana, has more than doubled since 2006, in part because of lower premiums and extra benefits, like gym memberships, that are not included in traditional fee-for-service Medicare.

What made these perks possible was, in effect, a subsidy from taxpayers and other Medicare beneficiaries. The federal government paid the private plans, on average, 14 percent more in 2009 than it would cost to treat the same people in traditional Medicare. The insurers used this extra money to reduce enrollees’ costs and add benefits.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act rightly required that these subsidies be reduced, although it stopped short of completely eliminating them. The reductions began to take effect in 2012, and have not, so far, visibly harmed beneficiaries or the plans. Since enactment of the law, Medicare Advantage premiums have fallen by 10 percent, the opposite of what some expected, and enrollment has increased by nearly 33 percent, according to the administration. But as the law intended, federal payments to the private plans dropped — from 7 percent more than services under traditional Medicare in 2012 to 4 percent more last year. The administration now proposes to further reduce the payments to Medicare Advantage plans in 2015. The loudest criticism has come from Republicans, but plenty of Democrats have chimed in.

Read More Here

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• Democrats Facing Political Fallout on Medicare
• UPDATE 2-US administration pulls back on Medicare drug benefit proposals
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• Barber: Obamacare's Medicare Advantage Cuts Could Be Toxic for Dems

A New Cold War? Ukraine Violence Escalates, Leaked Tape Suggests U.S. Was Plotting Coup

democracynow


 

Published on Feb 20, 2014

http://www.democracynow.org - A short-lived truce has broken down in Ukraine as street battles have erupted between anti-government protesters and police. Last night the country's embattled president and the opposition leaders demanding his resignation called for a truce and negotiations to try to resolve Ukraine's political crisis. But hours later, armed protesters attempted to retake Independence Square sparking another day of deadly violence. At least 50 people have died since Tuesday in the bloodiest period of Ukraine's 22-year post-Soviet history. While President Obama has vowed to "continue to engage all sides" a recently leaked audio recording between two top U.S. officials reveal the Obama administration has been secretly plotting with the opposition. We speak to Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. His most recent book, "Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War," is out in paperback. His latest Nation article is "Distorting Russia: How the American Media Misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine."

Obama administration’s plans to monitor newsrooms : “This is an extremely troubling and dangerous development that represents the latest in an ongoing assault on the Constitution by the Obama Administration,” chief counsel of the ACLJ Jay Sekulow

Obama administration’s plans to monitor newsrooms ignites bitter opposition

Photo: EPA

Americans are outraged over the Obama administration’s Federal Communication Commission’s plan to study exactly how news agencies pick and choose stories. Already, 33,713 and counting have signed a petition saying “no government monitors in newsrooms”, according to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).

In just the first two hours of the petition’s launch yesterday, the organization claims that the number of signers against the government’s plan to watch newsrooms reached 10,000. Last year, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) made an announcement about a Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs (CINs).

It explained that it’s goal was to understand how stories were chosen, news station priorities, production of content, populations it reached out to, perceived station bias as well as the percentage of news out toward the content to every part of the “critical information needs” in a region, according to what Fox News reported.

However, chief counsel of the ACLJ Jay Sekulow is highly concerned that it could be utilized as a tool of intimidation for specific news agencies to cover issues that state and federal officials feel are vitally important.

“This is an extremely troubling and dangerous development that represents the latest in an ongoing assault on the Constitution by the Obama Administration,” Sekulow said in a statement, “We have seen a corrupt IRS unleashed on conservatives. We have seen an imperial president bypass Congress and change the law with executive orders.”

Presently, the FCC has jurisdiction over the broadcast sector and does not have power over cable news or print. Local stations, networks, and the majority of radio stations would be subject to the monitoring project the federal agency wishes to carry out in the future.

“Now we see the heavy hand of the Obama administration poised to interfere with the First Amendment rights of journalists,” Sekulow said in an article on theblaze.com, “It’s clear that the Obama administration is only interested in utilizing intimidation tactics – at the expense of Americans and the Constitution. The federal government has no place attempting to control the media, using the unconstitutional actions of repressive regimes to squelch free speech.”

During press time, it was noted that an FCC spokesperson did not make a comment in regards to the plan. Various objectives are outlined for the research initiative. In a statement released on May 28, 2013 the goals are “collect data to inform: the access (or potential barriers) to CINs as identified by the FCC; the media that makes up media ecologies (i.e., what media is actually included in that ecology; ownership of that market; what specific type of content dominates those media ecologies; what is the flow of information within the ecology, etc); the use of and interaction between media that makes media ecologies (i.e., how do different layers of the ecology interact to provide for CINs; how do individuals of diverse neighborhoods/communities differ in terms of access to CINs); validate data collection tools/templates and protocols; demonstrate high internal validity and reliability of measured constructs.”

The Obama administration has come under harsh critique for how it has treated the press in the past. Reporters Without Borders’ group put the United States in the 46th place in the world for press freedom. It noted that government investigations into a variety of news agencies in national security incidents are what put the country in that ranking.

“The trial and conviction of Private Bradley Manning and the pursuit of NSA analyst Edward Snowden were warnings to all those thinking of assisting in the disclosure of sensitive information that would clearly be in the public interest,” the international journalists report states.

“US journalists were stunned by the Department of Justice’s seizure of Associated Press phone records without warning in order to identify the source of a CIA leak,” the report noted, “It served as a reminder of the urgent need for a ‘shield law’ to protect the confidentiality of journalists’ sources at the federal level.”

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Canada Free Press

Hooray for our glorious state-run media!

Behold the Obama administration’s creepy plan to put FCC monitors in America’s newsrooms

By Robert Laurie (Bio and Archives)  Thursday, February 20, 2014
Hey, you know what’s a pain in the rump for the ruling class? That pesky “freedom of the press,” that’s what. Reporters can investigate whatever they want, and then they can just go ahead and put those reports on the air. That means that someone might discover the horrible things politicians are doing, and they might even decide to run the story.
If only there was a way for Obama’s FCC to get the First Amendment under control.
From Mediaite:

An FCC commissioner is warning people about an agency study that would bring government monitors into newsrooms and inspect issues like the amount of time spent on the “critical information needs” [CIN’s] of Americans in news content.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal bringing people’s attention to this study, saying “the government has no place pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.” And while participation is technically voluntary, ignoring them would not be a wise decision for any news outlet that wants an FCC license.

The FCC has evidently cooked up eight “CIN’s” that it feels outlets should be covering. Their study would demand that news departments answer a series of questions designed to “ascertain the process by which stories are selected, station priorities (for content production quality, and populations served), perceived station bias, perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the eight CIN’s and perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”
Read More Here
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Banks warned they risk prosecution if they follow Obama admin. guidance on marijuana

Enlarge Photo

** FILE ** President Obama speaks at a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Oct. 24, 2012. (Associated Press)

The Washington Times

By Valerie Richardson

DENVER — Bankers should beware of the Obama administration’s newly issued green light for banks doing business with the legal marijuana industry, according to the head of the Colorado Bankers Association.
Memos released Friday by the Justice Department and Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network were intended to give banks leeway to open accounts for marijuana businesses in states like Colorado and Washington that have legalized retail pot. Instead, the guidance “only reinforces and reiterates that banks can be prosecuted for providing accounts to marijuana related businesses,” said the CBA in a Friday statement.

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SEE ALSO: Obama admin.: Banks can do business with marijuana sellers

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“In fact, it is even stronger than original guidance issued by the Department of Justice and the Treasury,” said CBA president and CEO Don Childears. “After a series of red lights, we expected this guidance to be a yellow one. This isn’t close to that. At best, this amounts to ‘serve these customers at your own risk’ and it emphasizes all of the risks. This light is red.”
Colorado’s first-ever legal marijuana market, which kicked off Jan. 1, has been hampered by a lack of access to bank accounts and small-business loans. Many of the state’s retail pot shops are cash-only enterprises, making them vulnerable to crime.
Washington is expected to start sales of retail pot in June. Voters in Colorado and Washington approved in 2012 ballot measures legalizing limited amounts of recreational marijuana for adults 21 and over.
“Now that some states have elected to legalize and regulate the marijuana trade, FinCEN seeks to move from the shadows the historically covert financial operations of marijuana businesses,” said FinCEN Director Jennifer Shasky Calvery in a statement.
“Our guidance provides financial institutions with clarity on what they must do if they are going to provide financial services to marijuana businesses and what reporting will assist law enforcement,” she said.
But the FinCen memo makes it clear that banks must avoid doing business with illegal marijuana operators or those that violate the eight priorities laid out in the Justice Department’s so-called Cole Memo, issued in August by Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

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Forbes

The Feds' Scary Reassurances To Banks That Deal With State-Licensed Marijuana Businesses

Jacob Sullum, Contributor

On Friday the Treasury Department and the Justice Department issued guidelines for banks that do business with state-licensed marijuana suppliers. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, the aim of the memos is to reassure financial institutions that are leery of accepting cannabusinesses as customers because they worry it will attract unwanted attention from federal regulators and prosecutors. But as with the August 29 memo in which Deputy Attorey General James Cole said that prosecuting properly regulated marijuana growers and sellers would not be a high priority, there are no guarantees, and that fact is likely to deter traditionally cautious banks more than plucky cannabis entrepreneurs.

The Treasury memo, issued by the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), says the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) requires financial institutions to file “suspicious activity reports” (SARs) for all marijuana businesses. But FinCEN draws a distinction between marijuana businesses that violate state law or implicate one of the Justice Department’s “enforcement priorities” and marijuana businesses that do neither. The former merit “marijuana priority” reports, while the latter fall into a newly invented “marijuana limited” category. According to the memo, this distinction “aligns the information provided by financial institutions in BSA reports with federal and state law enforcement priorities.”
What are those priorities? Cole’s August 29 memo lists eight: 1) “preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors,” 2) “preventing the diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal under state law in some form to other states,” 3) “preventing drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public health consequences associated with marijuana use,” 4) “preventing the growing of marijuana on public lands,” 5) “preventing marijuana possession or use on federal property,” 6) “preventing revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises,” 7) “preventing violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana,” and 8) “preventing state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover or pretext for the trafficking of other illegal drugs.” At the end of the memo, Cole adds that the feds might also intervene for other, unspecified reasons.
The FinCEN memo lists “red flags” that suggest a marijuana business deserves special scrutiny, including “international or interstate activity,” an inability to “demonstrate the legitimate source of significant outside investments,” signs that the business is “using a state-licensed marijuana-related business as a front or pretext to launder money derived from other criminal activity,” and “negative information, such as a criminal record, involvement in the illegal purchase or sale of drugs, violence, or other potential connections to illicit activity.” Such red flags are supposed to inform banks’ decisions about which customers to reject or drop as well as which sort of SAR to file. FinCEN warns that the red flags it mentions “do not constitute an exhaustive list.” Although FinCEN says its advice “should enhance the availability of financial services for, and the financial transparency of, marijuana-related businesses,” it never actually says banks that follow the guidelines need not worry about getting into trouble with regulators.

Read More Here

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The revelations of a team of security and arms experts are challenging American intelligence assumptions about the Syria chemical attack

Op-Ed: New evidence shows US intelligence on Syrian sarin attack faulty

By Ken Hanly

Jan 16, 2014

Damascus - U.S. technical intelligence on the Damascus sarin attack of August 21, 2013 appears flawed as new analysis of the rocket said to have delivered the gas in a main attack has too short a range to have been fired from government positions as the U.S. claims.

There have long been questions about the intelligence used to make the case that the Assad regime carried out the attack, and no very plausible motive for Assad to mount the attack has ever been offered. Some claim that the attack was the result of frustration by Assad forces at their inability to dislodge the opposition from the areas attacked. However, there were UN inspectors in Damascus at the time and a gas attack had been a red line for U.S. intervention. The largest attack on the night in question was delivered by a rocket whose range was too limited to have been fired from Syrian government positions from which the Obama administration has insisted they originated. The rocket had long been recognized as improvised and not one that some intelligence operatives believed was part of the Syrian armaments. Neither was such a weapon declared as part of its arsenal or uncovered by OPCW inspectors. It is possible that Syria deliberately left such rockets out of its declaration in order not to be tied to the event. Even if this were so, it does not explain why the U.S. continues to insist that the rocket was launched from positions that lie beyond the rocket's range!

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New analysis of rocket used in Syria chemical attack undercuts U.S. claims

By Matthew Schofield

McClatchy Foreign StaffJanuary 15, 2014 

 

This image provided by Shaam News Network on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013, has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting. It purports to show bodies of victims of an attack on Ghouta, Syria

UNCREDITED — AP

BERLIN — A series of revelations about the rocket believed to have delivered poison sarin gas to a Damascus suburb last summer are challenging American intelligence assumptions about that attack and suggest that the case U.S. officials initially made for retaliatory military action was flawed.
A team of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government positions where the Obama administration insists they originated.
Separately, international weapons experts are puzzling over why the rocket in question – an improvised 330mm to 350mm rocket equipped with a large receptacle on its nose to hold chemicals – reportedly did not appear in the Syrian government’s declaration of its arsenal to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and apparently was not uncovered by OPCW inspectors who believe they’ve destroyed Syria’s ability to deliver a chemical attack.
Neither development proves decisively that Syrian government forces did not fire the chemicals that killed hundreds of Syrians in the early morning hours of Aug. 21. U.S. officials continue to insist that the case for Syrian government responsibility for the attack in East Ghouta is stronger than any suggestion of rebel involvement, while experts say it is possible Syria left the rockets out of its chemical weapons declaration simply to make certain it could not be tied to the attack.
“That failure to declare can mean different things,” said Ralf Trapp, an original member of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and a former secretary of the group’s scientific advisory board. “It can mean the Syrian government doesn’t have them, or that they are hiding them.”
In Washington, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said its assertion of Syrian government responsibility remains unchanged.
“The body of information used to make the assessment regarding the August 21 attack included intelligence pertaining to the regime’s preparations for this attack and its means of delivery, multiple streams of intelligence about the attack itself and its effect, our post-attack observations, and the differences between the capabilities of the regime and the opposition. That assessment made clear that the opposition had not used chemical weapons in Syria,” it said Wednesday in an email.
But the authors of a report released Wednesday said that their study of the rocket’s design, its likely payload and its possible trajectories show that it would have been impossible for the rocket to have been fired from inside areas controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
In the report, titled “Possible Implications of Faulty U.S. Technical Intelligence,” Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argue that the question about the rocket’s range indicates a major weakness in the case for military action initially pressed by Obama administration officials.

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• UN Weapons' Inspector: "Syria Chemical Weapons Were Fired from 'Rebel' Held Territory"
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• New analysis of rocket used in Syria chemical attack undercuts U.S. claims

Forbes : Obamacare Will Lift Tax Fraud To A Whole New Level

Photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

The healthcare.gov website continues to be a nightmare for those Americans trying to enroll and receive subsidized insurance. The law behind it all, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, is also causing millions of Americans to lose their current insurance (over 5 million so far). These unfortunate people had low-priced insurance plans with limited coverage, plans that do not meet the minimum requirements for insurance under Obamacare. There is only one group of people that appears set to win from Obamacare: tax fraudsters.
The main feature of Obamacare is a system of subsidies to make insurance affordable for people who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford market price insurance policies. The law also provides coverage for children under 26 on their parents’ insurance and people with pre-existing conditions can now buy insurance at more favorable premiums. However, the main mechanisms for expanding coverage are making people eligible for Medicaid or offering them subsidies.
People who earn slightly more than the poverty level and who were not previously eligible for Medicaid (either because of earning too much or because they are childless adults) will now get Medicaid, free federal government health insurance, if they live in a state that agreed to expand Medicaid to cover that group of people.
People who earn from 133 percent to 400 percent of the poverty line are eligible for subsidies when they purchase insurance policies through a state exchange. There are currently lawsuits over whether it is legal for the federal government to offer the subsidies to people who buy insurance from the federal exchange (the law never says they can). However, the Obama administration plans to offer the subsidies through the federal exchanges whether it is legal or not.
These issues are all fairly well known, but what has been much more sparsely reported is that the law is almost perfectly designed for tax fraud. This tax fraud, which will be at least somewhat legal, will happen in two stages.
First, the way the Obama administration is implementing the law allows people to state their income with little to no verification. By stating a low income, people can qualify for a large subsidy which gets paid in advance. When people receiving 2014 subsidies file their taxes in April 2015, if it turns out their income was higher than they originally stated, you might think they would then have to repay the subsidy.
But now we get to the second part of the tax fraud. Under the law it is not only difficult for the government to get its money back, in some cases it is legally impossible. There are two limits on the ability of the IRS to collect the overpayment.
The IRS is not allowed to place a lien on your property or garnish your wages in order to collect money owed under Obamacare. This applies to both overpayment of subsidies and to the penalty for not purchasing insurance at all. That means unless a person voluntarily pays what is owed the IRS can only collect money from people who would otherwise be owed a refund on their taxes. If someone owes money either for not purchasing insurance or overpayment of a subsidy, the IRS can deduct the amount owed from the refund the person would have received. If they are not owed a refund large enough to collect the entire amount, there is nothing more the IRS can do.

Read More Here

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• Obamacare Will Lift Tax Fraud To A Whole New Level
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