More Americans living outside the U.S. gave up their citizenship in the first quarter of 2015 than ever before, according to data released Thursday by the IRS.
The 1,335 expatriations topped the previous record by 18 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Those Americans are driven to turn in their passports in part because of laws that have expanded bank reporting and tax compliance requirements for expatriates . . .
An estimated 6 million U.S. citizens are living abroad, and the U.S. is the only country within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside.
In many cases, those choosing to give up their citizenship have limited connections to the U.S. and have lived outside of the country for most of their lives. Anyone born in the U.S. automatically receives citizenship, and people born abroad to U.S. parents are typically citizens as well.
“The cost of compliance with the complex tax treatment of non-resident U.S. citizens and the potential penalties I face for incorrect filings and for holding non-U.S. securities forces me to consider whether it would be more advantageous to give up my U.S. citizenship,” Stephanos Orestis, a U.S. citizen living in Oslo, wrote in a March 23 letter to the Senate Finance Committee. “The thought of doing so is highly distressing for me since I am a born and bred American with a love for my country.” (Read more from “Americans Living Abroad Set Record for Giving up Citizenship” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-08 00:36:562015-05-08 00:36:56Americans Living Abroad Set Another Record for Giving up Citizenship
American freedom came under attack on May 3rd by soldiers of international jihad. I’m speaking of the attempt by Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi to commit mass murder at an exhibit of depictions of Muhammad in Garland, Texas. These two men arrived at the site clad in body armor with rifles, with the clear intent of murdering unarmed Americans for “blaspheming” their religion.
The organizers of “Draw Muhammad” were trying to demonstrate that Islam is only at home in a position of unchallenged power, with laws backing up its scripture’s incessant threats of hellfire with the sword of the state. These two Muslims went a long way toward proving the point.
Here’s the cold reality: millions of Muslims worldwide believe, with the backing of their own religious authorities, that they have the duty to go anywhere in the world and impose Islamic penalties, including death on non-Muslims who oppose them. That includes missionaries, cartoonists, journalists, politicians, and now American citizens just outside Dallas. I know someone who attended “Drawing Muhammad.” If it weren’t for the courage and competence of local police, he’d be dead today.
Islamists have clear religious reasons for thinking as they do. Expert in Islamic jurisprudence Daniel Akbari, author of Honor Killing and New Jihadists and Islam, cites the authorities used by Islamists to justify such attacks: the Q’uran, and the Hadith, Islam’s tradition of “sayings” about Muhammad, which scholars use to interpret that often-puzzling document. The Q’uran’s “surah 9:61 states, ‘those who hurt Allah’s Messenger (Muhammad SAW) will have a painful torment,’” Akbari notes. “Surah 9:63 says, “Know they not that whoever opposes and shows hostility to Allah and His Messenger (SAW), certainly for him will be the Fire of Hell to abide therein. That is extreme disgrace.’”
Okay, but that’s just a threat for the next world, right? Well, no. Akbari explains: “Under ijma, the consensus of Islamic scholars that forms the basis for sharia, any act that will send one to hell in the afterlife warrants the punishment of death in this life.” In the absence of an Islamic government to carry out such punishment — as Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State currently do — some individual Muslims feel empowered to enact God’s justice in places like Garland, Texas. Imagine how we would live if Christians believed that they could punish sin with death, on their own authority.
There’s a special penalty for those who go further than opposing Islam, and criticize its founder. Akbari explains, “Islamic scholars also find authority for putting to death those who insult Muhammad from Surah 33:57 of Koran. This verse states, ‘Verily, those who annoy Allah and His Messenger (SAW) Allah has cursed them in this world, and in the Hereafter, and has prepared for them a humiliating torment.’ The phrase ‘humiliating torment’ means they will go to hell in the next life and they therefore deserve death.”
Blasphemers deserve it, and individual Muslims feel empowered to enforce it: the death penalty, for dissent.
Multiculturalism: The Suicide Pill of the West
It is staggering to learn that some Western liberals — for instance, one journalist at CNN — are practically blaming the would-be victims of the May 3 attacks, suggesting that the show presenting cartoons of Muhammad was needlessly provocative. The attack’s targets, and by extension the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, it’s suggested, were tempting Muslims to slaughter them.
If some Muslims around the world really feel empowered by their sacred scriptures to kill anyone who “opposes and shows hostility” toward Islam, then, such liberals surmise, the only way to safely avoid terror attacks would be for the rest of us to defer to it and grant it pride of place in our societies. That is, in fact, what Islamists want to accomplish. Why liberals are eager to help them almost boggles the mind — except that for the secular left, the enemy is invariably orthodox Christianity, while every other religion deserves respect in the name of “diversity.” That is the central tenet of multiculturalism, which has nothing to do with racial harmony and tolerance. The core of this ideology is the rejection of any part of the Western tradition that has its roots in Christianity.
With that ideology in mind, we can make sense of the decision by President Obama’s State Department to accept more than 100 Iraqi refugees from ISIS last week — admitting every non-Christian who applied for a travel visa to speak out about the Islamic State’s reign of terror (including Shi’ite Muslims), and rejecting the sole Christian applicant, Sister Diana Momeka, from the scholarly Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine. As Sister Diana’s spokeswoman, Juliana Tamaroozy of the Philos Project, commented, “That’s like putting salt on our wounds and a slap in all Christian faces.”
As Dinesh D’Souza documented, President Obama was trained since his youth, and up through his college years trained himself, in anti-colonial, anti-Western multiculturalism. He was only able to join a Christian church when he found the quasi-Marxist Black Liberation sect of Rev. Jeremiah “God D*** America” Wright. Obama has taken every opportunity — for instance, at prayer breakfasts — to downplay recent proofs of Islamic intolerance, and highlight long-past crimes of individual Christians. The reason isn’t that he’s secretly a Muslim, but that he’s openly a multiculturalist.
Our president applies a rigorous double standard to Christian and non-Christian sinners. The Christians are acting as servants of a long-engrained power structure, which serves to repress and demean a long list of groups, from gays to abortion doctors. Non-Christians, however bigoted, are the heirs of this world’s victims, the people who were held down by Western imperialism and impoverished by capitalism. So the non-Christians (including Muslims) deserve a lower level of scrutiny, even when they are overwhelmingly more violent and intolerant.
And that is why the next time you hear Barack Obama discuss religious intolerance, he won’t mention Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi. He is more likely to be talking about your pastor. (See “Jihad Attacks in Texas, While Obama Keeps U.S. Safe From Iraqi Nuns”, originally posted HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-08 00:35:512015-05-08 00:35:51Jihad Attacks in Texas, While Obama Keeps U.S. Safe From Iraqi Nuns
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fighting words on immigration this week, designed in part to provoke Republicans into a reactionary counterattack, instead drew an unusual early response from several top-tier GOP presidential candidates: silence.
Two days after Clinton vowed to expand on President Obama’s executive actions to shield up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was one of the only leading Republican 2016 contenders to strike back, calling it a “full embrace of amnesty” that is “unfair to hard-working Americans.”
By contrast, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie did not weigh in publicly on the remarks Clinton made Tuesday at a campaign stop in Las Vegas. Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), one of Obama’s most vocal critics on immigration, waited until Wednesday evening to respond on Facebook, writing that Clinton wants to “continue and expand President Obama’s illegal amnesty” and “continue the lawlessness that is dividing our country.”
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee told MSNBC on Wednesday that Clinton was wrong, saying the country needs to focus on border security first.
The relatively subdued GOP reaction illustrated a dilemma for a Republican Party still wrestling with the hot-button issue of immigration three years after Obama routed Mitt Romney behind overwhelming support from Latinos and Asian Americans. (Read more from “Why Clinton’s Immigration Speech Left Many Republican Rivals Speechless” HERE)
Former Navy SEAL Rob O’Neill, the man who shot Osama bin Laden, says the Islamic State “is telling the truth” about having 71 trained soldiers in 15 different states because “they are a populist” group . . .
Texas police killed two gunmen wearing body armor and armed with assault rifles who tried to ambush a “Draw Mohammed” cartoon contest in Garland, Texas. Elton Simpson, one of the armed attackers, linked himself to the Islamic State in a tweet just before the attack.
“We knew that the target was protected. Our intention was to show how easy we give our lives for the Sake of Allah,” said the Islamic State message posted today.
Former SEAL O’Neill pointed out that the Islamic State can claim credit for attacks after the fact “based on whether or not” the attack supports the group’s goals.
“ISIS is so popular right now because they’re over there with this glorified sense of resilience because no one’s fighting them,” said O’Neill. “They can make all those videos – there’s a lot of sympathy for ISIS in this country. It would take about 25 people working around the clock just to track one of these people.” (Read more from “SEAL Who Shot Bin Laden Reacts to Report ISIS Operates in 15 States: ‘They’re Telling the Truth'” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-08 00:34:452015-05-08 00:34:45SEAL Who Shot Bin Laden Reacts to Report ISIS Operates in 15 States: ‘They’re Telling the Truth’
The federal government set a record tax haul in April, taking in nearly a half-trillion dollars in one month alone, according to Congressional Budget Office statistics released Thursday.
April is always a busy month with the tax deadline on April 15, but this year’s haul was historic, totaling $472 billion, far outstripping the previous monthly record, set last April, of $414 billion.
Spending, meanwhile, was a more modest $317 billion, leaving the government with a surplus for that one month of $155 billion — also a record.
Despite that good month, the government is likely to run a deficit when the entire fiscal year is taken into account. But it will probably be smaller than last year’s deficit, and will be the lowest since President Obama took office . . .
“Receipts for the first seven months of fiscal year 2015 totaled $1,892 billion, CBO estimates — $155 billion more than receipts in the same period last year. That increase is roughly $40 billion larger than what CBO expected when it published its March 2015 report,” the nonpartisan agency said in its report. (Read more from “Feds Set Tax Haul Record: $472B in One Month” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-08 00:34:342015-05-08 00:34:34Feds Set Tax Haul Record: $472B in One Month
An unidentified “senior law enforcement official” tells the New York Times that, while the FBI had been aware of Garland, Texas jihadist attacker Elton Simpson for nearly a decade, they did not follow his violent, pro-jihad tweets as closely as they could have because “there are so many like him” that the agency is overwhelmed.
In a report highlighting the long paper trail Simpson left behind of supporting and engaging with jihadists online, particualrly on Twitter, the Times notes that the sheer barrage of information can make it difficult for law enforcement to identify legitimate and imminent threats out of a sea of wishful jihadist thinkers.
Simpson and his roommate, Nadir Soofi, attacked a “Draw Muhammad” art contest in Garland, Texas on Sunday armed with assault rifles. They were almost immediately neutralized by a traffic officer working at the Culwell Center in Garland, and managed only to shoot one officer in the leg before their demise.
The New York Times notes that, while the center was heavily monitored due to a barrage of terrorist threats online, Simpson himself had only been cursorily monitored. He nonetheless was extremely active on Twitter: “Mr. Simpson, a convert to Islam with a long history of extremism, regularly traded calls for violence on Twitter with Islamic State fighters and supporters, as well as avowed enemies of Pamela Geller, the organizer of the cartoon contest.”
Simpson appeared to be communicating extensively in particular with Mohamed Abduhallahi Hassan, an American who is currently waging jihad with the terrorist group Al-Shabaab in Somalia. Hassan is believed to have been the first jihadist online to highlight the Draw Muhammad contest and call for an attack on the event. (Read more from “Official: FBI Overlooked Texas Shooter’s Violent Tweets Because ‘There Are so Many Like Him'” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-07 03:43:232015-05-07 03:43:23Official: FBI Overlooked Texas Shooter’s Violent Tweets Because ‘There Are so Many Like Him’
The U.S. Senate will take up legislation to give President Barack Obama the trade negotiating authority he wants “very soon,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.
“It’s been almost an out of body experience but we’ve been working closely with the White House,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday as he said the trade bill would follow action on two other measures. “We’re working together to try to get it across the finish line.”
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, a foe of “fast-track” trade authority, called on Republicans to first consider measures to extend federal highway funding and modify U.S. surveillance laws.
The Obama administration is seeking to build a coalition of mostly Republicans and a few Democrats to back the trade bill, which lets the president send agreements in Congress for a quick vote without amendments . . .
In the House, the bill faces opposition from most Democrats and some Republicans. House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has said Obama will need to persuade Democrats to back him, something McConnell said is happening. (Read more from “Obama’s Trade Bill Gets Boost as Mitch McConnell Vows Vote ‘Soon'” HERE)
After a long winter in hibernation, many in my Baltimore County neighborhood were outside this weekend watching their kids play and chatting about the sad state of affairs in the city.
The unmistakable feeling shared by those in my neighborhood, located just outside the Baltimore City limits, was a deep sense of anger–not shock–that this city, known for its injustice, is about to violate our Constitution and place the interests of a mob over due process.
My community was sickened by the charges, but not for the same reason the capricious mayor of Baltimore expressed. Residents were appalled that a city prosecutor can, and would, chant a rally speech to placate a mob when no narrative statement or document was released detailing the probable cause of the charges.
Although our neighborhood is safe, it has never been too far from parts of the city where a weak civil society exists. Most of the residents in my neighborhood have either been victims of crime or know people who have suffered muggings, assaults, or burglaries. The infamous Knockouts came to our area as well. Just a few months ago, a neighbor was sucker-punched from behind two short blocks from our home.
If you poll any number of residents in semi-suburban neighborhoods close to major cities, you would likely find that an overwhelming majority feels that criminal justice laws are too fickle and police have not done enough to keep them safe.
Indeed, living in the same area where I grew up brings back memories of classmates coming in to school almost every day with stories of bikes being stolen or forcibly commandeered from roaming youths. And the story was always the same; the police recognized the names and addresses of those youths but could not do much more than offer some advice and sympathy because the juvenile justice laws in Maryland were always lax.
Yet, when one chooses not to engage in rioting or looting to express disgust with the system – a system that all too often fails to prosecute violent criminals, even when there are witnesses to the crime, a prosecution like the one with the 6 officers in the Freddie Gray case arises.
Hearing the news about the impetuous indictments, even as the Baltimore City Police Department was conducting an unprecedentedly thorough investigation, has reignited the sense of disquiet throughout these anxious but peaceful neighborhoods.
With a city government, led by a radical activist prosecutor pursuing trumped up charges in order to placate a mob, this will not end well for the Baltimore area. And the residents of this town know it.
At best, depending on the presentation of evidence, there is a civil case to be made here but nothing near the criminal charges that have been lodged against the 6 officers. Those charges will never hold up in court, especially on appeal. But what will happen to us when the mobs return after the evidence is presented, due process finally runs its course, and, barring any new evidence, the officers are acquitted?
The culture of vicious beatings and senseless vandalism has already percolated into Baltimore County. Throughout this likely protracted period of mob rule, possibly playing out over a period of months or over a year, none of us will feel safe traveling to stores and malls near or in the city.
In many ways we are like the “forgotten man” in Amity Shlaes’ epic book on the Great Depression. The ones who have to pay for bad choices made by politicians and other members of society but who are completely ignored during the entire public policy debate.
The public debate over police tactics and the inner city is largely a red herring. Despite the glorification and hyper-focus of the media, deaths of criminals apprehended by police are still very rare relative to the number of crimes committed and the number of people they take into custody. Like anything else, there are isolated cases where things go wrong. In some cases, the cops did absolutely nothing wrong; in other cases the cops were negligent or abused their power. These micro-level anomalies must be dealt with using our constitutional system for criminal justice, the same way we handle any accusation of crime.
The macro debate nobody wants to have is who is going to stand up for the forgotten man. We can liberalize laws pertaining to non-violent crimes. We can call for body cameras on all police officers. Heck, we can even abolish the police force. But who is going to look out for those who must constantly live in fear of violent crime?
And now that the principles of due process, presumption of innocence, and proof beyond reasonable doubt don’t apply to anyone (including black police officers) involved in any sort of fatal altercation with an African American, society is forced to live with the looming tyranny of mob rule.
Police will now be even more tepid about their approach to pursuing violent offenders. But this is not about the police; this could happen to anyone. The first high-profile case of mob rule was with George Zimmerman, a civilian.
While the media and liberal politicians, and some libertarians are looking to validate the “concerns” of those rioting, who is going to stand for those who are not rioting and don’t engage in “knockout” violence but are all too often victims of it? These are the forgotten people on the edge of suburbia, but they are most prominently those African Americans who live in inner cities but are sick of living in constant fear of violence. Who will validate their grievances?
While Obama and the Left engage in “soul searching” over federalizing and defanging the police, who will engage in soul searching about the growing epidemic of violent assaults against civilians? Who will engage in the soul searching over the slew of cop shootings, the most recent cop shot and killed in NYC?
At its core, Republicans have always stood for the rule of law and were tough against crime. It has worked for them more than any other issue because that is what the silent majority – the forgotten men of society – want of their elected officials. Republicans should not run away from it now. The challenge of defining right from wrong, criminal from victim, is as old as Sodom and Gomorrah. Republicans should not let political correctness obfuscate the truth and violate our Constitution. (See “#MobRule and the Forgotten Man”, originally posted HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-07 03:31:212015-05-07 03:31:21#MobRule and the Forgotten Man [+video]
By David Daoud. The anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement suffered two resounding blows this week, in college campuses across the U.S.
Bowdoin College in Maine defeated on Wednesday a student-wide referendum, sponsored by the institution’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which called for a complete academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
The referendum, in which 1,619 students (85% of Bowdoin’s student body) voted on the issue, ran from May 2 until May 6, and was defeated with a vote of 228 in favor (14% of the student body), 1,444 opposed (71% ) and 247 abstaining (15%).
The referendum was held after the anti-Israel group managed to get 20% of the student body to sign a petition calling for a boycott of Israel. (Read more from “Anti-Israel Protests Failing in the US” HERE)
Celebrated Singer Dionne Warwick Says Roger Waters’ Political Views on Israel ‘of No Concern’
By Eliezer Sherman. Legendary American singer Dionne Warwick said on Wednesday that her decision to perform in Israel this month would not be swayed by the “hard pressures” of prominent anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions activists in the music industry.
A statement released by the singer and U.N. global ambassador said Warwick “would never fall victim to the hard pressures of Roger Waters, from Pink Floyd, or other political people who have their views on politics in Israel.”
“Waters’ political views are of no concern,” the statement read.
Unlike singer-songwriter Lauryn Hill, who decided to cancel her Tel Aviv show just a few days before her performance this week, Warwick said that if she had “had an objection to performing in Israel, no offer would have been entertained and no contract would have been signed.”
“Art has no boundaries. Ms. Warwick will always honor her contracts,” the statement read. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-07 03:31:022015-05-07 03:31:02Anti-Israel Protests Reverse Course, Starting to Fail in the US
Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck said Wednesday he was “very concerned” by an officer’s fatal shooting of an unarmed homeless man in Venice, saying he had not yet seen any evidence that would justify the shooting.
Beck said he had reviewed a security tape showing the incident, but did not detail what it showed. He cautioned that the investigation was still in its early stages, but said that so far, “I don’t see the supporting evidence that I normally would.”
“Any time an unarmed person is shot by a Los Angeles police officer, it takes extraordinary circumstances to justify that,” he said. “I have not see those extraordinary circumstances at this point” . . .
The man, whom friends said was known by the nickname “Dizzle,” was described as a transient. He was in his 20s, L.A. County coroner’s officials said.
About 11:30 p.m., officers with the LAPD’s Pacific Division responded to a call from an employee at a local business reporting that a man was harassing customers near Windward and Pacific avenues. (Read more from “LAPD Chief Concerned About Fatal Shooting of Unarmed Man in Venice” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-05-07 03:30:132015-05-07 03:30:13LAPD Chief Concerned About Fatal Shooting of Unarmed Man in Venice [+video]
More Americans living outside the U.S. gave up their citizenship in the first quarter of 2015 than ever before, according to data released Thursday by the IRS.
