65 thoughts on “Miscellany: Fact Finding Forum in Toronto and American Citizens Abroad on Goldstein on Gelt”

1. @ Steve, I often agree with a lot of what you have to say.  But I definitely take exception here:

   I read comments about how they feel betrayed or abandoned by the US, when they’re the ones that left the country? The US didn’t betray you, you left, what are we supposed to do, fall to your feet because you have this such great perspective on America now because you’ve embraced a foreign culture?”

   That’s exactly the point for me.  I left.  And they betrayed me — didn’t honour their word, as we terminated my contract of citizenship according to US law in 1979. Since then I lived a happy, normal life, not part of the US, but I never had any reason to dislike it and never did.  Then over 30 years later, I discover they’ve retroactively reinstated the long-ago-terminated contract, causing a lot of problems for me and my family.  (And it appears this was done for crass opportunistic reasons.)

   Most Americans probably weren’t even born yet (or at least not out of elementary school) when my contract of citizenship ended.  This may be an inaccurate view, but the US is giving the impression that the core meaning of citizenship is taxes (not how the concept of citizenship was presented when I was in school there).  I admit I may have a biased view, but it is the impression the US has made on me in the past year.  

   As for me, I have recently received my CLN, recognising the 1979 date.  But I stick around Brock because of the moral support, both that I get (I can still use some — even with the CLN, this was such a major disaster experience (I haven’t written about all the cascading problems it’s caused) that my family and I still are recovering, and it’s a situation which people who have not experienced can’t completely relate to — unlike, say, a fire or a flood (I speak from experience, I am a fire victim (also that was a piece of cake compared to this, not kidding).  So, I’m still picking up moral support from Brockers, and I’m also here to provide moral support to others.  Also I stick around to help people with the State Dept procedural aspects of expatriation.

   I don’t get involved in trying to change US law (never did, I was a teen when I left) and never will.  But I have realised this past year that if it weren’t for citizenship-based taxation, the US never would have tried to reinstate my citizenship and that of all others who relinqushed long ago, an attempted reinstatement which messes up many aspects of our lives (because there is a lot more to citizenship than just taxes).  So, it has piqued my interest in the issue of US citizenship-based taxation and I’m curious as to what is going to happen.  Also I consider FATCA a Canadian sovereignty issue, so that’s another reason I stick around Brock – not trying to change US law, but to keep it out of my country.

2. Not to discourage anyone from going to this event if they want to, but for context 1) Sinclair Stevens *was* a mainstream Canadian political figure before resigning from Brian Mulroney’s cabinet in disgrace in the 1980s, 2) Dorian Baxter is a defrocked Anglican priest (nothing all that disgraceful – he had a disagreement with his bishop about Elvis impersonation ministry) and 3) the Progressive Canadian Party ran in nine ridings in the 2011 election, mostly with vote totals in three digits.

3. Is there anyone speaking at the U of T event who is not a member of this (new to me) political party? A party whose president (Dorian Baxter) got less than 1 percent of the vote in 2011 (Newmarket-Aurora, 77 votes out of 7735) isn’t in a position to do much.

   Sorry I’m short on enthusiasm. I am sure these folks mean well, but I don’t look to an Elvis Presley impersonator for a solution to the IRS/FATCA mess. It all looks to me like an opportunity for self-promotion.

4. Steve is a Homelander. Therefore, he will never be able to understand what ex-pats are going through unless he was to leave the Homeland and put down roots elsewhere.       

   Today’s ex-pats have much in common with the American colonists who declared independence from the British Homeland in 1776. The colonists faced then, like ex-pats face today, TAXATION WITH NOTHING IN RETURN from the HOMELAND–a direct result of having NO REPRESENTATION in the Homeland’s legislature. I believe it was called TYRANNY back then.  

   The American colonists “whined” about it then just like today’s ex-pats are “whining” about it now.  The result will be the same–whining didn’t work back then, just like it won’t work now. 

   However, what did work then and what will work now, is formal RENUNCIATION / RELINQUISHMENT OF THE HOMELAND’S CITIZENSHIP. It is the only solution if an ex-pat wants to survive and live at least a semi-normal life.     

   So Steve, if you happen to be reading this, sorry for sounding so anti-American, no ex-pat wants to sound that way. But enough is enough! No man or woman worth their salt can tolerate living under such conditions. America’s founders didn’t tolerate it, why should anyone else?

5. This is all great and good if you have the luxury of never needing to go back to the Homeland.  For those of us who must reserve the ability to go back or who have their money held hostage in an IRA, the situation just plains sucks the big whazooooo.   It’s a total defecation upon those of us who live more than half our lives away from the motherland.   The politicians and administrators and media are just complete and total a__holes, same as all their lackeys.

6. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

   That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

    A bill of particulars documenting the ruler’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” of the Emigrants’ rights and liberties.[

    Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present Ruler of United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Emigrants. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

   He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

   He has forbidden Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

   He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

   He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

   He has dissolved Representative Houses of emigrants repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.

   He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

    

   He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Assets.

   He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing self-Judiciary Powers.

   He has made IRS Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

   He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

   He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies of Tax Collectors without the Consent of our legislatures.

   He has affected to render the Revenue Service independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

   He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

   For quartering large bodies of armed collectors among us:

   For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Thefts which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

   For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

   For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

   For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

   For transporting our assets beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

   For abolishing the free System of US Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

   For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

   For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

   He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

    He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

   He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of confiscation, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

   He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to testify against their Countrymen, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethrens assets, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

   He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Bank Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

   In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

    This section essentially finished the case for independence. The conditions that justified revolution have been shown.

    Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our United States brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

    

7. Mark Twain,

   Unless one cuts the umbilical cord, they will always have control over you. Its not fair, but it is an unfortunate fact of life.  

8. *@WhoaitsSteve, I did not “keep” my US citizenship, I was told back in the early 70’s after returning to Canada when still a child that I would  automatically give up US citizenship if I voted in Canada after turning 18 or by living in Canada and not returning to live in the US. This was US law at the time. Under your laws I have not been a US citizen for almost 40 years, yet your State Department insisted I was until I renounced. So I did! Many of us are upset that we have retroactively been made citizens after being told we were not US citizens. And worse we have been retroactively been made US taxpayers.

9. Thanks for your very meaningful, wise words, Patrick Henry!! (Whoa!ItsSteve may be gone, gone, gone.)

10. @NorthernShrike, who wrote:

    Is there anyone speaking at the U of T event who is not
    a member of this (new to me) political party? A party whose president
    (Dorian Baxter) got less than 1 percent of the vote in 2011
    (Newmarket-Aurora, 77 votes out of 7735) isn’t in a position to do much.

    I have been asked to speak by one of the organizers, and I am not a member of the the Party.  I am not worried that they are trying to gain from this issue as am today not affiliated with any political party:

    Pippin: And whose side are you on?
    Treebeard: Side? I am on nobody’s side, because nobody is on my side, little orc.

    I would recommend that anyone who has ties with any of the major political party begin to make use of their connexions.  The PC Party is a small, but if they happen to be on our side, well that’s a start–hopefully we can get all the major and minor political parties to united to fight FATCA.  Let’s try to get everyone in the area to come.  Bring your American friends, as it will be an “Fact Finding Forum”.

11. Absolutely, everyone should go.  It’s a rally against FATCA, not a rally in support of a party.  If I were in Toronto, I’d be there for sure and I belong to a different political party. 

    I hope Toronto area Brockers will meet each other there and go out for beer or coffee afterwards, too.  A few of us have gotten together here in Ottawa a few times, it’s really nice to meet in person!

12. @Patrick Henry, Yes! That’s the analogy I make too. It really does show the moral hypocrisy of the current US government. Our founding fathers so greatly resented being taxed by a king in a foreign land that they created a revolution. Yet now our modern US government is doing exactly the same thing that the founding fathers so abhorred, and is taxing its subjects no matter where they live in the world, even though they don’t live in the US or use its services. It really is an abuse of Americans abroad just for the benefit of those at home. Which is why the rest of the world uses the only fair basis for taxation–residency.

13. Great Britain was justified in taxing its North American colonies. The French and Indian war was very expensive but secured the safety and expansion of the American colonies. Continuing military protection was expensive to provide. So American colonists did receive an important service in return for their taxation. Also note that the Boston Tea party was provoked by the British reducing taxation not increasing it as popularly supposed.

    So in truth the American colonists were less hard done by than we are today in terms of taxation.

14. Jaffar,

    A significant number of colonists fought in the French/Indian war.

    Regarding the tea, I recall that the British did in fact reduce the price of tea purchased from the British tea monopoly (East Indian Tea company I think). However, the Brits had used that as part of the carrot to get the colonists to eat the camouflaged stick, which was the small tax they had levied on it. The colonists understood that the British were trying to get them to accept the precedent of taxation directly from the British Homeland. The colonists didn’t fall for it and the result was the Boston Tea Party. 

    In any case, I completely agree with your point that the US Homeland treats its ex-pats worse than the British Homeland had treated its ex-pats (American colonists). The abused have become the abusers.

    Its like being married (forced marriage at birth) to an abusive spouse. They will never change therefore the relationship must be severed, the sooner the better.       

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