UPDATE: The initial story by Ralph Z. Hallow, chief political writer at The Washington Times, has been revised and greatly expanded at the same previous link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/24/sen-rand-paul-sue-irs-us-treasury/

This is stop-the-presses news: Rand Paul has joined forces with Jim Bopp, Solomon Yue and Republicans Overseas and will be one of seven plaintiffs in the upcoming lawsuit against the IRS and the US Treasury Department. The suit will be filed by a new composite organization called Republicans Overseas Action.

Some crucial highlights:

Sen. Rand Paul to sue IRS, U.S. Treasury

Rand Paul is poised to become the first major presidential candidate in memory to sue the government he seeks to lead as president.

The Kentucky senator will take legal action against the U.S. Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service for what he says is the denial of his constitutional right to vote on more than 100 tax-information treaties that the Obama administration unilaterally negotiated with foreign governments, The Washington Times has learned.

In what the suit says is a violation of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, President Obama has not consulted the U.S. Senate about the treaties nor given the Senate an opportunity to approve or disapprove of the treaties. The administration calls them “intergovernmental agreements.” They require foreign banks to gather and share private financial information about millions of Americans living and working outside the U.S. — information they would not have to disclose to the U.S. government if they lived and worked in the U.S.

The treaties or agreements are the enforcement mechanisms of the Obama administration’s Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), enacted by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010.

The act is despised by many of the estimated 8.7 million Americans living overseas, a record number of whom have — with great anger and reluctance, according to those who have spoken to the foreign and U.S. press — renounced their U.S. citizenship rather than attempt to comply with FATCA.

Mr. Paul, a Republican who announced his presidential bid in early April, will join six other plaintiffs in the suit that a new organization called “Republicans Overseas Action” expects to file in a southern Ohio federal district court the week of June 29. The court’s Republican makeup is considered at least open to the constitutional arguments that the plaintiffs lay out.

Continue reading →

 
On April 5, 2014, I sent this tweet to every Conservative MP. A few answered.
 
I am sure they have forgotten by now.
 

@GeraldKeddy No Debate on #FATCA? http://t.co/gOoV0m3FTv Sneak This Bill Thru? U Will Pay at Polls-We R 1 million + families, friends
 
— U.S. Expat Canada (@USExpatCanada) April 5, 2014

 
But I haven’t. And I hope you haven’t either.
 
Duke of Devon just posted a very valuable resource that can help us ensure that the Harper Government is DEFEATED in the fall election.

Due to our very un-democratic first-past-the-post system, the danger of Harper being returned to power is very real, since people may not consider the need for strategic voting. Yes, ABC but exactly how to do it best in your riding?

This organization leadnowca is spearheading an effort to identify the most likely to win non-Conservative candidate in ridings all across Canada.

One is asked to sign the following pledge:
 

I pledge to vote for the best local candidate who can defeat the Harper Conservatives in my riding.

Continue reading →

The secret to grass-roots movements is legitimating people’s anger and pain and steering them into serious plans of action which will have a realistic chance of success.

In my post about my recent ousting from the American Expatriates Facebook Group (henceforth “AE”), I tried to be factual, rational and cerebral. I intentionally avoided incendiary or foul language; rather I tried to simply recount what happened at AE, without undue emotion. In a later post, one of the contributors at AE posted that my post was “not so nice“:

This group is a valuable resource for many and I greatly appreciate all those who work hard for all of us. However, it does not excuse the nastiness which occurred yesterday. If I played a part in the nastiness, I offer my apologies. The only excuse I have is that I was at the end of my rope with certain individuals. One of the individuals has posted a not so nice piece on the Isaac Brock Society site about this group and Keith Redmond. For me, it shows the true colors of this person and this person will do anything to ram their way of doing things down everyone’s throat. So please make sure that we can have a level of decorum which can make this group the best that it can be.

Here are some other characterizations from various commenters:

1. “I missed the discussion but I totally support you, Keith Redmond. Mr. Petros is free to start his own group for whiners and America bashers.”
2. “The departed whiners went way beyond US bashing. To say more about my opinion would enter into subjective judgments regarding personalty traits and would not be productive.”
3. The blog poster [Petros] has the right to say what he likes, but I think he’s crossed a line using the names of the admin in his post Keith. You don’t start randomly posting hate blogs using people’s names unless you can back up what your saying, even then it’s just best to stop and think before you post. The Internet is written in ink not in pencil what is said can’t be removed. Best to really think before you post, after all this group isn’t secret or closed the whole world can see it!!!!

A hate blog? Really? I do express my disagreement with the policy of deleting comments and entire discussions. But I did not express hatred for these people. Well I do admit that the term “Homelander Abroad” is pejorative, particularly in the manner that I used it. I’ve been asking myself if this characterization is merely inflammatory. What made me think it was an appropriate to call AE administrators “Homelanders Abroad”.

So today I’d like to set out my reflexions on what characterizes Homelanders Abroad. Here is what I came up with: Continue reading →

As the date for the summary trial for the Canadian FATCA IGA draws nearer, behind the scenes, various groups are contemplating other ways to attack USA’s extraterritorial overreach into the sovereignty of other countries, and its insistence that US persons abroad are Americans first and foremost, thus subject to US law.  Republicans Overseas are expected to soon be announcing a legal challenge against FATCA from within the USA. Rumblings at the Isaac Brock Society, and at various forums representing Americans abroad, hint at a potential future legal challenge aimed directly at citizenship based taxation.

All these attempts at helping to save ‘US persons’ living outside USA from American laws, are laudable and worthy of support.  However for the most part, no group has been talking about another obvious battle to be fought, which is the fight to help set people free from the chains of unwanted US citizenship. How many times have we heard from homeland Americans who don’t understand our pain, “If you don’t like it, why don’t you just renounce”? Unfortunately, relinquishing US citizenship is a mine field full of potential compliance nightmares (ex’s: PFICS, foreign trusts), possible penalties, and an outrageous renunciation fee (currently $2,350 USD), thus rendering it a near impossibility for many.

Yet to be free from US citizenship would mean freedom from FATCA, and freedom from citizenship based taxation(CBT), and ultimately freedom from ANY AND ALL US LAWS imposed by USA against those it considers ‘US persons’ NOW AND FOREVER MORE.

Continue reading →

Shadow Raider makes some thoughtful and thought-provoking comments on my post and the ensuing conversation:

I’d like to make some constructive criticism for all sides:

1. Many commenters on this website seem to assume that US residents are patriotic “homelanders” who support CBT. I live in the US and I can tell you that this is not true. The vast majority of Americans don’t even know that CBT exists. When I inform them, I get various responses: some say that the US should not tax foreign income or demand information on foreign assets because it’s none of their business; many sympathize with the problems of Americans abroad (complex paperwork, fear of penalties, financial restrictions); some try to justify CBT with consular services or the right of return, but when I reply that these things are not funded by taxes (or don’t actually cost anything, in the case of the right of return), they concede; only a few invoke patriotism, but as a joke.

2. Many here also seem to believe that “homelanders” see Americans abroad as “tax cheats”. I don’t know where you got this idea. I’ve only seen this as a brief mention by a US politician from the 19th century, and I don’t think anyone else believes that. I’ve certainly never heard anyone say that here. US residents correctly assume that people move abroad for various reasons. Many of them have family or friends who lived or are living abroad.

3. Condemning US patriotism while praising Canada is inconsistent and alienates those who are not from Canada. CBT applies equally to all countries outside the US, and the Canadian government has done the same as the rest of the world regarding FATCA, it’s not a special case. I’ve also seen some commenters focus too much on issues in specific countries such as the various 4-letter Canadian accounts or Australian superannuation. People outside these countries have absolutely no idea what these things are. The problem is CBT in principle, not the details of how it affects specific investments.

4. Some people, like Republicans Overseas, are focusing way too much on FATCA. Blocking or repealing FATCA is very unlikely, and even in that case it would not solve the myriad other problems caused by CBT.

5. Expatriate lobbying groups seem to be ridiculously afraid that the US government will not pay attention to their demands if it looks like they don’t love the US. Seriously? Michael Kirsch cleverly pointed out the inconsistency of identifying yourself as part of US society while requesting to be taxed as someone from outside that society. It would make much more sense if they just stated the truth: they are actually more attached to the countries where they live, but want to keep US citizenship simply for the peace of mind that they could return to the US one day. Maybe the CBT debate should be centered on whether the right of return constitutes membership in the society or merely the eligibility for membership.

I had a couple of my posts taken down by Keith Redmond at the American Expatriates Facebook Group.

The first made use of Lebron James comment, ‘I’m the best player in the world’.

I wrote, “Mirror Mirror on the wall, who is the best basketball player of them all?” Keith Redmond, the co-administrator of the Facebook group asked me what relevance it had to the group and I said it is analogous to American exceptionalism, “Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the most exceptional of them all?” It is really about the National Narcissistic Personality Disorder from which Americans suffer as a nation. It leads to the USA unilaterally imposing FATCA on the rest of the world as so beautifully captured in this video, which is still the best explanation of FATCA ever:

The second censored post reported on the State Department’s denunciation of Dominican Republic citing the United Nations human rights provisions. I said the USA was hypocritical because it violates the human rights of its own expats. 

Then as Deedee Gierow, the Democrats Abroad co-administrator of the American Expatriates Facebook group, posted that she was sick and tired of all the bashing of the USA and that she, Keith and others were working very hard to lobby Washington (Facebook link). This solicited a discussion in which Redmond and Gierow heroically defended the purpose of the group and that they would henceforth delete any America-bashing content.

The American Expatriates group’s mission is to inform, educate, and provide the most up to date information regarding United States government policies affecting the lives of Americans living overseas. It is extremely important to mitigate the misconceptions about Americans living outside the United States vis-à-vis the public at large

It remains unclear to me how it is possible to have a group which discusses Citizenship Based Taxation and FATCA  from an expat’s perspective without being anti-American. This is the conundrum–either the content is irrelevant (e.g., cookie recipes) or it is anti-American–e.g., discussions of the lives that are being ruined by FATCA and CBT. How do you stand by and allow innocent people to be destroyed by a foreign government and say positive things about that government?

There was some back and forth between myself and some of the other active members of the group, in which I learned that I am argumentative and offensive. Really? That really surprised me.

My third censored post was a comment: if we can’t really complain about how the USA is treating us, then we are supposed to be like a battered spouse, who quietly accepts abuse, and so I posted a link to the following page and suggested the situation was comparable to spousal abuse: Intimate Partner Violence Dynamics.

It seemed like Expat Forum deja vu, when I concluded that a censored forum is an oxymoron. So later when I suggested that some people would indeed leave the group because it wasn’t a safe place anymore, Redmond told me to leave. So I suppose my days are numbered.

I guess that is all I can write for now. My knee is bothering me and it is hard to stand up at my desk. In any case, it is good that some people are trying to lobby the US government, but I have no faith that that will change anything. So perhaps my cynicism and pessimism is not welcome in best of all worlds–but certainly not on certain “forums”. Cheers to you all.