Saturday, December 12, 2020
When Whistleblowers Are Treated Like Criminals
Bradley Birkenfeld is a whistleblower, someone who exposes corruption in either government or the business world that cost taxpayers a fortune. Through information from Birkenfeld, a former wealth manager at UBS in Switzerland, the federal government was able to recover “$780 million dollars in civil fines and penalties paid by UBS bank, and over $25 billion dollars in collections from U.S. taxpayers who had illegally held ‘undeclared” offshore accounts in Switzerland and other countries,” according to the National Whistleblower Center.
That’s a lot of money, so you’d think the federal government would’ve been very grateful to Mr. Birkenfeld. After all, The New York Times reported in 2012 that his actions led to “(t)he disclosure of Swiss banking information — which caused a fierce political debate in Switzerland before winning approval from the country’s Parliament — set off such a panic among wealthy Americans that more than 14,000 of them joined a tax amnesty program. I.R.S. officials say the amnesty program has helped recover more than $5 billion in unpaid taxes.” But gratitude is not what happens when someone exposes the wealthy and connected cheating the system.
The government gleefully recaptured all the funds illegally hidden overseas by Americans, but the Obama Justice Department…pressed charges against Birkenfeld for allegedly withholding information about one of his clients.
Why Birkenfeld would have withheld information on one client while exposing thousands of other lawbreakers doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but it still makes more sense than him, the person who exposed this fraud, being the only person involved in the whole affair to go to jail.
None of the tax cheats were prosecuted – billionaires hiding billions of dollars in income from the IRS and only the whistleblower went to jail, or was even prosecuted. It’s the ultimate in swampiness.
It pays to be a well-connected person who can afford to “donate” to the powerful.
When she was Secretary of State, in what seems like an unusual move, Hillary Clinton herself announced a deal with the Swiss bank that gave the IRS 4,450 of the 52,000 names of wealthy Americans who’d illegally hidden money overseas. In typical Clinton fashion, the Wall Street Journal reported, “From that point on, UBS’s engagement with the Clinton family’s charitable organization increased. Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according to the foundation and the bank.” Bill Clinton also received “$1.5 million to participate in a series of question-and-answer sessions” with a UBS executive.
The rich were protected, sheltered really, and the Clintons had a lot of money thrown their way. As always happens with the Clintons, I’m sure it was just a coincidence.
While Birkenfeld was sentenced to 40 months in jail, it wasn’t all bad. Thanks to whistleblower laws that reward people who expose fraud and corruption with a percentage of the monies recovered, after he was released from prison he received $104 million, a record amount for these types of cases (and the only part of the story I remember hearing at the time it was happening). But he’s still a convicted felon. As an American, the idea of having a conviction for exposing one of the largest fraud cases in U.S. history on your record doesn’t sit well with Brad, no matter how much money he got. So he’s seeking a presidential pardon.
The day Birkenfeld was sentenced in 2009, President Barack Obama was golfing with Robert Wolf, the CEO of UBS, the very bank he’d exposed in this scam. The guy who exposed the crimes goes to jail, the guy who oversaw the company enabling them gets to pal around with the president of the United States.
In what is perhaps the least shocking part of this whole story, Wolf has a long history of donating to politicians, large sums of money, and mostly to Democrats. The ability to golf with the president while your company has just been exposed for enabling financial crimes against the United States doesn’t happen for just anyone, and it doesn’t come cheap.
The whole story reads like the ultimate swamp tale – the person pointing out the crimes of the elite is the only one to pay a criminal price. Sure, he’s rich now, so it’s not like he didn’t receive some semblance of justice, but he still has the stigma of being a convicted felon.
With all the people pushing President Trump to pardon people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, someone like Bradley Birkenfeld, who actually served time rather than flee the country, would be a better use of pardon power. It’d also be a nice way to thumb his nose, one more time, at the elitists who have been allowing the rich and powerful to get away with damn near everything for decades.
Yet Another Muslim Country Joins Abraham Accords With Israel
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that the North African Muslim-majority nation of Morocco would normalize relations with Israel, marking yet another massive diplomatic breakthrough in the Middle East thanks to Trump’s strategy and negotiations.
“Another HISTORIC breakthrough today! Our two GREAT friends Israel and the Kingdom of Morocco have agreed to full diplomatic relations – a massive breakthrough for peace in the Middle East!” the president tweeted.
America gave Morocco an important concession as part of the deal.
“Today, I signed a proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara,” Trump added. “Morocco’s serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity! Morocco recognized the United States in 1777. It is thus fitting we recognize their sovereignty over the Western Sahara.”
Spain decolonized Western Sahara in 1975, giving Morocco and Mauritania joint administration of the territory. During a war between Morocco, Mauritania, the Sahrawi nationalist movement, and the Polisario Front, Mauritania relinquished control over the territory in 1979 and Morocco secured de facto control of about 80 percent of Western Sahara, with the Sahrawi nationalist movement controlling the rest.
American acknowledgment of Morocco’s rule of Western Sahara is a major diplomatic coup for the North African nation, but Trump was also right to cite Morocco’s early recognition of the United States. On December 20, 1777, Morocco became the first country in the world to recognize American independence. Morocco would later join the Barbary States in the First Barbary War (1801-1805) against the United States.
Morocco itself has a fascinating history. Christopher Columbus connected Europe with the Americas after King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille united Spain and expelled the Muslim rulers from Granada in 1492 in the Reconquista. After a succession of Arab sultanates ruled Morocco, Spain and France carved out zones of influence in the early 1900s and Morocco finally gained its independence in 1956.
Morocco’s normalization of ties to Israel marks yet another historic step toward peace in the Middle East and North Africa, one of Trump’s greatest achievements as president.
Trump laid the groundwork for these historic deals by pulling out of the Iran deal, strengthening America’s energy independence through oil and natural gas, and moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The assassination of Iranian Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani also played a key role. Trump put a key check on Iran’s influence in the Middle East and skirted the Palestinians’ repeated obstruction of diplomatic progress. This opened the floodgates for Arab-Israeli peace deals as countries like Saudi Arabia began to view Israel as a potential ally against Iran.
In the Abraham Accords, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) normalized relations with Israel. Shortly before the Abraham Accords, Trump brought Muslim-majority Kosovo and Christian-majority Serbia together for a historic agreement that included promises to set up embassies in Jerusalem. Last month, Sudan — which recently ousted a dictator who had supported terrorism for decades — normalized relations with Israel.
Before the Abraham Accords, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia announced they would open their skies to Israeli flights to the UAE. As part of its rapprochement with Israel, the UAE agreed to order hotels to serve Kosher foods in Abu Dhabi, delivering a powerful symbol of Jewish acceptance in a notoriously anti-Semitic part of the world.
These historic diplomatic successes have brought Trump multiple Nobel Prize nominations. The Trump administration also appears to be aiming for one last major breakthrough: an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which would be the jewel in the Trump administration’s Middle East policy crown.
If Joe Biden does indeed enter the White House next month (as seems likely, though Trump is still contesting the election), this progress in the Middle East may represent one of Trump’s most important legacies. While Biden will undermine much of Trump’s progress, the fact that Morocco was willing to make this move after the president appears to be on his way out illustrates that Trump’s new Middle East may be here to stay, regardless of Biden’s desperate attempts to restore the status quo.
California’s Coronavirus Restrictions on Religious Services Struck Down by Ninth Circuit Court
With some Trump-appointed judges on it now, the 9th Circuit is no longer automatically the 9th circus
Earlier this week, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a California church fighting coronavirus restrictions on indoor worship services.
The appeals court struck down an October order from a district judge and awarded South Bay United Pentecostal Church relief against California’s indoor worship restrictions.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the lawsuit argued that California Gov. Gavin Newsom, while condoning large outdoor protests and secular indoor gatherings, targeted religious services with coronavirus restrictions. The church also highlighted the fact that Newsom was caught dining at an expensive restaurant even though he told Californians to stay home because of the virus.
According to KPBS news, the panel based the decision on recent rulings from the Supreme Court, which favored houses of worship challenging New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and another California church which also challenged Newsom on similar grounds.
Paul Jonna of the Thomas More Society Counsel, the group representing South Bay United Pentecostal Church, stated that, "[T]he guidance from the Supreme Court makes it abundantly clear that California's restrictions on houses of worship are blatantly unconstitutional. We are confident that South Bay will fully vindicate its fundamental constitutional rights in short order." Jonna also told the Free Beacon that “[I]t's just a matter of time before they're struck down.”
This panel clearly ruled correctly. As Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in the Supreme Court case of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, New York v. Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of New York last month, “[I]t is time—past time—to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques.” And, as Justice Neil Gorsuch added, “[E]ven if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical.”
Voters are finally beginning to resent total nationalist control over Scottish life
From politics and culture to education and family life, Nicola Sturgeon's influence is felt everywhere
She’s regularly closed their pubs. And they shrugged and didn’t complain. She cancelled their summer holidays. And, again, they just about put up with it. She even effectively abolished Hogmanay by excluding the entire traditional Scottish New Year holiday from the five-day festive freedom period. Once more hardly anyone – yours truly excepted – protested. How can this be happening in as disputatious a nation as Scotland?
Easy: so overwhelming is the grip Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP has on every aspect of life in Scotland – political, economical, educational, cultural – that a majority of Scots appear to have become inured to Nat control.
Until now. There are at last signs that the worm may be turning and that the Scots have remembered how to complain. That may be a startling conclusion to those who subscribe to PG Wodehouse’s view of Scots, grievances and rays of sunshine, but it’s happening nevertheless.
Perhaps the most significant cri de coeur has come from no less than Sir Tom Devine, Scotland’s best-known historian. He’s described as “arrant propaganda” and “dangerous nonsense” a 27-page document designed to be taught in Scottish schools, which had been accused of presenting a warped pro-independence and anti-English view of Scotland’s past. It contained numerous references to Scots being mistreated by the English and wrongly claimed that Winston Churchill sent English troops and tanks to put down the Red Clydesiders after the First World War.
But propaganda in Scotland’s schools is just the start of it. Culturally, Scotland is firmly in the grip of the SNP and its separatist sympathisers. Fiona Hyslop, the culture secretary, controls a £230 million budget. But to critics who claim that the best way to win a grant is to support the SNP or be proficient in Scottish fiddle and accordion music, she says that artists ‘‘don’t have to be close to government. They just have to have a common understanding of what the country wants.” The country’s best-known composer, Sir James MacMillan, has accused the SNP of turning cultural endeavour into ‘“state propaganda” and of controlling culture for political purposes.
It’s in broadcasting that the real control is most obvious. First Minister Sturgeon’s pressure won a £40 million new TV channel from the BBC which aims to present the news “from a Scottish perspective”. The highlight of its schedule since the middle of March has been a daily 60-minute briefing by Ms Sturgeon, with no opposition to get in the way, which has dominated the pandemic battle and enabled her to shoot ahead in the opinion polls.
Meanwhile, on STV, Scotland’s main independent channel, you’ll quickly note that every commercial-break is filled with “ads” paid for by the Scottish Government and which underline and re-emphasise the First Minister’s Covid messages. Earlier this year the station was forced to withdraw a video it had circulated which showed smiling children delivering a paean of praise to “Nicola, our First Minister. Thank you for always keeping us safe”.
Family life is not excluded from SNP influence. Consider the SNP’s decision to criminalise parents who smack their children and their attempt to legislate that every child, no matter their circumstances, should have a guardian or “named person” to support them. That bid has been seen off for now, but the SNP is determined to bring it back.
Although hotly denied there is little doubt that anti-Englishness is a main driver of the national agenda, one that is now pumped out from every part of Scottish public life. As Neil Oliver, the TV archaeologist and opponent of independence, said, the prevalent nationalist attitude is that “south of the border... lies the embodiment of all that is corrupt, selfish and heartless.”
But it was never going to be possible to blame the English for all that ails Scotland. In an astonishing sign of party disharmony, SNP leaders of Edinburgh council, as well as a local MP, are furious that Ms Sturgeon’s restrictions have left the capital’s pubs and restaurants effectively closed in the week before Christmas. However, it is the sheer scale of the SNP’s suffocating grip on every aspect of Scottish life – together with growing suspicions about La Sturgeon’s and her husband’s role in bringing down Alex Salmond – that may at last be alienating the voters.
***************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
*****************************************
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
/>
Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
No comments:
Post a Comment