UPDATE SUNDAY NOVEMBER 13, 2016
REINCE PRIEBUS CHOSEN TO BE PE TRUMP’S CHIEF OF STAFF
EXCERPTS:
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump on Sunday chose Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and a loyal campaign adviser, to be his White House chief of staff, turning to a Washington insider whose friendship with the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, could help secure early legislative victories.
But as chief of staff, Mr. Priebus will be the one who has several hundred White House staff members reporting to him. He will be the primary gatekeeper for Mr. Trump and the person most responsible for steering the president’s agenda through Congress. That role will be especially critical for Mr. Trump, who has never served in government and has few connections to important political figures.
As Mr. Trump denounced the Republican primary process as rigged and, on occasion, threatened to quit the party and run on his own, Mr. Priebus remained neutral. And when Mr. Trump secured the nomination, Mr. Priebus stood by his side.
Mr. Priebus worked with Mr. Trump on the nuts and bolts of presidential politics, trying to smooth his rough edges and staying in close contact as a bare-bones campaign prepared to go up against the Clinton machine.
PRESS RELEASE VIA MR. PRIEBUS JULY 2015
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I found myself wondering just what it is expats will want to focus on now, that the Republicans have the Presidency, and control of the House and the Senate. As Stephen Kish pointed out, this could change in two years (well, really just a bit more than a year as once the campaiging for the interim elections in 2018 start, we will likely have lost our chance to get this done quickly. What we do in the next year is critical to dumping FATCA and CBT.
I started thinking about what they promised and have gone through the Platform. I am going to list the main things I found that relate to our issues; if anyone finds more, please post. I also have two documents that focus specifically on FATCA and RBT as well as the link to Republicans Overseas Resolutions posted long ago on their FB site. It would be helpful if others want to isolate points and phrases to focus on in communications to the Republicans.
People may. may not want to coordinate efforts but I assume there will be letters written, emails sent and so on. You may remember that Congressman Mark Meadows (R NC) introduced H.R. 5935 seeking to have an oversight hearing on FATCA repeal. Once we know the date of the hearings and who will sit on the committee, we would start there I presume. And then follow the movement of what occurs……Calls for witnesses were posted on the Isaac Brock Society indicating interested parties should contact Keith Redmond by email at FATCA_Testimonials@outlook.com
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THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM
excerpts from sections related to our issues
RESTORING THE AMERICAN DREAM
Fair and Simple Taxes for Growth p 1
The current tax code is rightly the object of both anger and mockery. Its length is exceeded only by its complexity. We must start anew. That will be an enormous undertaking and, if it is to succeed, it must command the attention and approval of the American people………….. We will welcome all to this enterprise — to discuss, debate, challenge, and amend — so that together we can restore economic growth for the American people and, even more important, renew their faith in the future
NB:This is their promise to listen.
Our Tax Principles p 2
To ensure that past abuses will not be repeated, we assert these fundamental principles. We oppose retroactive taxation. We condemn attempts by activist judges at any level of government to seize the power of the purse from the people’s elected representatives by ordering higher taxes. We oppose tax policies that deliberately divide Americans or promote class warfare.
NB:This would deal with the bizarre idea that 877A is retroactive.
To guard against hypertaxation of the American people in any restructuring of the federal tax system, any value added tax or national sales tax must be tied to the simultaneous repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, which established the federal income tax.
NB:This would eliminate the whole need for filing in terms of taxes as value added or national sales tax will not affect Americans abroad in any significant way.
A Competitive America p 2
American businesses now face the world’s highest corporate tax rates. That’s like putting lead shoes on your cross-country team. It reduces companies’ ability to compete overseas, encourages them to move abroad, lessens their investment, cripples job creation here at home, lowers American wages, and fosters the avoidance of tax liability — without actually increasing tax revenues. A more damaging policy is hard to imagine.
NB:Please see an excellent paper by Roger Conklin which outlines how CBT directly affects Trade.(via The Revenue Act of 1962 & The Tax Reform Act of 1976; the U.S. has never recorded a trade surplus since 1975).
We endorse the recommendation of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, as well as the current Administration’s Export Council, to switch to a territorial system of taxation so that profits earned and taxed abroad may be repatriated for job-creating investment here at home. We believe American companies should be headquartered in America. We should reduce barriers to accomplishing that goal. A Winning Trade Policy International trade is crucial for all sectors of America’s economy. Massive trade deficits are not. We envision a worldwide multilateral agreement among nations committed to the principles of open markets, what has been called a “Reagan Economic Zone,” in which free trade will truly be fair trade for all concerned.
NB:Trade is important to Trump. He needs to know how CBT affects it. If they offer territorial taxation to corporations,they can offer RBT to Americans abroad.
A REBIRTH OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
The Fourth Amendment: Liberty and Privacy p 13
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the Foreign Bank and Asset Reporting Requirements result in government’s warrantless seizure of personal financial information without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. Americans overseas should enjoy the same rights as Americans residing in the United States, whose private financial information is not subject to disclosure to the government except as to interest earned. The requirement for all banks around the world to provide detailed information to the IRS about American account holders outside the United States has resulted in banks refusing service to them. Thus, FATCA not only allows “unreasonable search and seizures” but also threatens the ability of overseas Americans to lead normal lives. We call for its repeal and for a change to residency-based taxation for U.S. citizens overseas.
NB: This needs no comment. Other than it might be pointed out that many of the accounts reported on FBAR and 8938, are registered government plans. Some even include government grants which are taxed. The idea that these can be used for money laundering or terrorism is simply absurd.
GOVERNMENT REFORM
Reforming the Treaty System p 26
We intend to restore the treaty system specified by the Constitution: The president negotiates agreements, submits them to the Senate, with ratification requiring two-thirds of the senators present and voting. This was good enough for George Washington but is too restrictive for the current chief executive, who presumes to bind this country to bilateral and multilateral agreements of his devising. His media admirers portray his personal commitments — whether on climate change, Iranian weapons, or other matters — as done deals. They are not, and a new Republican executive will work with the Congress to re-establish constitutional order in America’s foreign relations. All international executive agreements and political arrangements entered into by the current Administration must be deemed null and void as mere expressions of the current president’s preferences. Those which are in the national interest but would traditionally have been made by treaty must be abrogated, renegotiated as treaties, and transmitted to the Senate for its advice and consent as required by the Constitution. The United States will withdraw from all agreements and arrangements failing those standards.
NB: Bye bye IGAs
Please see Professor Allison Christians excellent paper The Dubious Legal Pedigree of IGAs (and Why it Matters)
Internal Revenue Service p 27
We also support making the federal tax code so simple and easy to understand that the IRS becomes obsolete and can be abolished.
NB: Bye bye OVDP, Streamlined, threats of penalties etc
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Here are three more direct sources of the Republican positions. I will probably do the same with these as above. But the more the merrier!
Resolution Supporting Residence Based Taxation
Resolution toRepeal the Foreign AccountTaxCompliance Act
A proposed RNC Resolution titled — Resolution to Repeal the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) compiled by Republicans Overseas.
@ Jim Jatras
Thank you for doing this and all you have done previously to get FATCA repealed. It’s very much appreciated.
@ Badger
“A cat may look at a king.”
Except in the case with Obamacare. Obamacare is the poor subsidizing the health care of the rich while not being able access the care they are required to pay for. The average monthly premium for the Bronze plan is $289.88. as of January of this year n at least one state. A friend of mine pays $600 a month. The deductible for an individual is $5,731 and it is $11,601 for a family. There are very, very few Amiricans that could ever hope to pay these deductibles and thus will never receive any of the coverage they are required to pay for. Only those rich enough to pay the deductibles will ever receive and financial help from Obamacare.
Is it any wonder that it has never enjoyed mass popularity?
@ N D
What waiting lists was your dad on and why, where and cry importantly, when?
While do you bring up Japan’s health care system? The ” Taraimawashi” problem alone should take Japan’s system off any list of decent health care systems. A problem that apparently Canada shares, much to my shock when first learning of it.
Yes, hospitals in the US do indeed cater to the rich of all nations. So, why do the rich of other nations, including Canada, need to come to the US to get the care they need or want? Why are these countries, including Canada, unable to provide what their citizens have paid for?
Japan T you have no idea what you’re talking about. You sound like one of those fake Facebook sites spreading fake news. Anecdotes are not facts. The US health care ‘system’ is consistently ranked the worst in the developed world. Unfortunately Canada’s is not much better.
This is a Canadian website. Don’t tell me ro mind my own business.
@JapanT
The IUD reference is not difficult to figure out – there’s apparently been a spike in requests since the election from women concerned that some combination of defunding Planned Parenthood, repeal of Obamacare, and the very existence of Mike Pence will make access to reliable contraception more difficult and/or prohibitively expensive for low income-earners. (Oh what would Rush Limbaugh say to that?) It is a valid concern, particularly given the general anti-abortion agenda of the incoming administration. Google about, you’ll find the stories.
As for surveillance, I merely suggest that the new administration is not likely to make the situation better. The Donald does not seem terribly interested in respecting constitutional rights, insofar as he is aware of them. I thought the Masha Gessen piece on surviving autocracy was instructive.
I think we can safely debate these issues without venturing into tinfoil-hat territory, no?
For Schumerphobists –
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/us/politics/democrats-house-senate.html
So, no waiting lists for medical procedures in Canada?
So, many of the accidental here are accidental because they were born of Canadian parents in the US. Why? Perhaps because the hospital on the US side was the closest but is that always the case. However, when that is the case, may that also be a sign of not getting the service you paid for?
This remains a bit unclear to me, can hospitals in Canada refuse patients who are being transported by ambulance?
There was a case a few years ago Natasha Richardson died after a skiing accident. It was reported at the time that if only she could have gotten proper medical care in time, she most likely would have lived. While it is true that she initially refused treatment “Quebec’s antiquated medical evacuation system played a part. “. (From People.com. Couldn’t find the articles I originally saved)
Why, if provided with tax payer funds to provide the taxpayer with modern health care is any part of the system antiquated?
“”Our system isn’t set up for traumas and doesn’t match what’s available in other Canadian cities, let alone in the States,” Tarek Razek, director of trauma services for the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal,…”
Do not try to let your health care services off the hook because it was “just one case”. If they are going to force people to pay for the service they have no excuse to ever not be able to provide it when and where it is needed. If they can not live up to these standards, they have no business forcing people to buy in to it. That would be fraud if a private company did the same.
In short, if I pay you to provide a service,, you had best deliver it. Period. Why is it different with healthcare.
@Nonymous
Umm, reacting to scaremongering is usually the tinfoil hat territory.
I have no doubt that there are many women running to stock up on IUDs, but that does not mean that there is a rational reason to do so.
How is that defunding any program resricts anyone’s rights? So, ya can’t get it free, save up your pennies and buy it. For cryin’ out loud, maybe I should lobby for a “real beer” subsidy so I can get off these 2nd and 3nd class types of beer sold in Japan. Real beer, is after all, healthier than the lower class substitutes.
You mentioned “embrace of white ethnic nationalism, and so on”. and yet you support Planned Parenthood. Do you know anything about its history, its founder, its purpose? Have you bothered to look for the stats on who many abortions have been and are being performed by race? If not, please do some digging. You may be surprised, hopefully you will be shocked.
What would Rush Limbough say? I have no idea, why don’t you ask him?
“What waiting lists was your dad on and why, where and cry importantly, when?”
Surgery for lung cancer in the mid-2000’s. He never tried to smoke but his employers and smoking co-workers forced it down his lungs.
“While do you bring up Japan’s health care system? The ”Taraimawashi” problem alone should take Japan’s system off any list of decent health care systems.”
I meant it to show that waiting lists exist everywhere.
I suppose the US avoids taraimawashi but it doesn’t mean everyone gets taken care of when they arrive at an emergency ward.
@ND
What exactly, was your father waiting for?
While a patient might have to wait for conditions to be right, swelling to go down etc or even for scheduling, waiting lists are not (we’re not?) a feature of health care in the states.
“I suppose the US avoids taraimawashi but it doesn’t mean everyone gets taken care of when they arrive at an emergency ward.”
True. The test is not whether or not a behavior can be found in a society but how that society treats the behaviors. It cases in the states, personnel involved face termination , loss of their license and possible criminal prosecution and civil penalties and public lawsuits.
Although I have looked, I have not found instances of any of these outcomes for those involved in such cases in Japan or elsewhere.
A are few headlines and lines from the many articles and papers I have collected over the years on Japan’s Taraimawashi problem. How I wish I could track down my master list…
8.3% of Tokyo emergency cases refused by multiple hospitals
30-hospital denial fatal to woman
82-year-old woman turned away by five hospitals dies
24,089 cases of multiple ER snubs last year Kyodo News
Emergency patients were rejected by medical facilities more than three times before being hospitalized in 24,089 cases nationwide last year, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said Tuesday.
Crash victim refused by 14 hospitals dies
A medical travesty in Nara
(From The Japan Times Sept. 4 issue)
In late August, a woman from Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, miscarried after nine hospitals refused to admit her. In August 2006, 19 hospitals refused to admit a woman, also from Nara, who had lost consciousness during delivery. She died eight days after she gave birth in the 20th hospital. These two incidents highlight the shortage of maternity clinics and obstetricians, and the Nara Prefectural Government’s slowness in improving its ability to transport pregnant women in critical condition to hospitals that can admit them.
The Kashihara woman was picked up by an ambulance shortly before 3 a.m. Aug. 29 after complaining of a stomach pain and bleeding. Her water broke at around 5 a.m. on her way to the 10th hospital. Approximately 10 minutes later the ambulance collided with a minivan. She arrived at the hospital in another ambulance around 5:50 a.m. and the fetus was pronounced dead.
The number of childbirth facilities in the nation declined from 4,200 in 1993 to 3,000 in 2005. In 2004, obstetricians and gynecologists nationwide numbered about 10,600, a 7 percent drop from 1994. The government must take urgent measures to increase the number of obstetricians and improve their working conditions.
It is possible that miscommunication also contributed to the tragedy. If the paramedics had better explained the urgency of the situation to doctors, the woman may have been admitted earlier. The collision between the ambulance and the minivan also serves as a reminder that the police must work harder to make drivers aware that they must give way to emergency vehicles.
Nara Prefecture has a computerized network of hospitals to help those in an emergency find a suitable and available hospital. To do this, however, the patient’s doctor must make a request to a member hospital. Since the woman did not have a regular doctor to make the request, the ambulance team could not use the system. The prefectural government must quickly rectify this system’s absurd inflexibility.
Pensioner Dies After Being Denied Treatment at 25 Different Hospitals
Hospitals in Tokyo refusing flu patients.
Health care in the US was not perfect, but better than this.
@dod
You mentioned a survey ranking health care systems. Similar surveys have given high marks to the VA hospitals in the US too. In a very limited context, many VA hospitals do provide excellent medical services…..to those very few who can get in to one.
@dod
The numbers for thecost and deductibles of Obamacare come from the Boston healthcare exchange official website.
Of the few people I am still in close touch with in the US, only one now has access to healthcare and he is a public school teacher. My parents have not signed up for it. They can not afford the premiums nor the deductsble and my mon absolutely refuses to give the gov. all the information required to sign up for it. No doctors in their are accept Medicare. My brother also can not afford it.
A friend in California has too sell of investments (bougt back when he was fully employed) to pay his $600 a month premiums and can not afford the deductibles. No matter though, there are no dictors in his area that are in the ACA exchange. Actually, there are. Two are dead and the third long since retired.
All had insurance before Obamacare.
@James Jatras
Thanks for getting that Hill article out.
ddavid1 could use some reinforcements in the comment section.
@dod
Yes, this is a Canadian website. Obamacare is a US law, and unlike FATCA it directly affects those living in the US more than it does those of us outside the US. It is a law that Americans have never wanted. What business is it of yours whether or not it is repealled?
tried to go over and see if I may add reinforement but can’t keep the page from jumping to the very bottom. Anyone know how to stop the page from jumping to the very bottom when viewing on an iPad?
@Jim Jatras Thanks for the excellent article!
@Jim Jatras: great article, heartening, my spirits are way up! THANKS
Strange: I wrote a fairly detailed comment on the Jatras article, and it is being “held for review”, while a brief response to another remark did show up. I don’t get it. Anyway, I’m sure no reader of The Hill, other than us and the trolls, bother to read the comments.
Not sure how this thread became an argument about Canadian health care versus Obamacare. Can we stop fighting over this diversion, boys?
To me, this is the whole reason we are here. A large part of the human population has bought the idea that you must pay for what I want/need. Either sold by or harnessed by politicians, governments worldwide are faced with a grim reality. Make good on the promise of free goodies or face the mob with pitchforks. Sadly for them, there is no more money for the freebies for the mob. If they try to raise more revenue from their residents, they will face the pitchforks. So they look abroad, telling the mob that the only reason they can not make good on their promises of freebies is because their traitorous citizens living overseas are not paying their fair share.
It is ironic that some Canadians are expressing opposition to a government that has pledged to repeal the laws that are the reason for all of us being here because this same gov. also plans to repeal a program that these same Canadians receive no benefit from yet are expected to help pay for. Canadians who will benefit from a positive outcome of a lawsuit that is in part, small from my own personal contributions but very large in the hole it has left in my wallet, funded by Americans who will benefit greatly from the repeal of Obamacare.
And to think that there are people who decry pursuing personal gain, the one thing that holds this group together.
@Barbara, yep you are right and I was almost going to jump in violating one of my IBS beliefs on such distractions!!! Thank you,
@JapanT, end it…….I agree with you as when I left america I was paying $400 a month and now to match what I have is slightly less than $4,000 a month. For IBS the only relevance is Obamacare had no GOP votes and much of it has been modified by illegal exceutive action.
@Mods…..could someone make a post of the James Jatras article?
@Brockers, I think printing the article and sending it to US Congress Critters is a wise idea.
@James Jattras, What can I say? Thank you so much.
@All
Thanks. Posting on Brock with links would be appreciated. More to follow.
Note that a syntax glitch crept into first paragraph in formatting for publication. I’ve ask the editor at The Hill to fix it.
@Brockers yes I am a foreigner to Canada but there is one thing I want to see.
Assuming Trudeau does not back down I look forward with glee when Pres Trump declares the IGA agreements to be illegal which will vindicate Allison Christian.
Trudeau AND the come were warned it was illegal but they were smarter than everyone else.
JapanT I suggest this is not the best place to discuss the relative merits of the 2 systems. Neither is ideal by any means.
Natasha Richardson’s case proves nothing. It was tragic, she refused immediate treatment after a very very minor fall (not unreasonable at the time) she went to her hotel to rest. By the time trouble became obvious it was too late. Her family blamed no one. Those who bemoan the state te system often have an ulterior motive.
Thanks, Jim Jatras. I have posted at Brock, with the reasons from an ordinary Canadian citizen who in no way understands all the nuances of how this can be changed, but just feels the injustice of it all:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2016/11/17/the-hill-contributer-jim-jatras-november-16-2016-dumping-obamas-faux-foreign-tax-legislation-should-be-high-on-trumps-to-do-list/