Nancy Pelosi: The Woman Who Stood Up to Trump

24 December 19 An Urgent Call to Supporters We do not need huge support, but we have to have the bare minimum. The problem is that the “bare” minimum has become “bear” maximum struggle. Good news, readership is up. The people are here. Now we need a few donations. Thank you. Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts, CA 95611

24 December 19 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News WE ARE STRUGGLING FOR “REASONABLE DONATIONS” - So far this month we have served 491,662 visitors. 307 have helped with a contribution. Those numbers explain everything good and bad about Reader Supported News. More importantly they explain what RSN could be. “Reasonable Donations” are the missing link. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Nancy Pelosi: The Woman Who Stood Up to Trump Lauren Gambino, Guardian UK Excerpt: "The veteran Democrat began 2019 by being elected speaker of the House for a second, historic time and ended it by leading the president's impeachment." READ MORE Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. (photo: Alexey Vitvitsky/Sputnik/AP) Why We're Pressing Hard for the Ukraine Documents Susan Smith Richardson and Jim Morris, Center for Public Integrity Excerpt: "This weekend, emails about Ukraine military aid released to the Center for Public Integrity triggered a new round of conversations about the timeline of the White House's decision to halt the aid, the issue at the heart of President Donald Trump's impeachment." READ MORE Bernie Sanders greets supporters at a rally in East L.A. (photo: Genaro Molina/LA Times) 'Authenticity,' 'Culturally Relevant': Why Bernie Sanders Is Resonating With Latinos Asma Khalid, NPR Khalid writes: "This weekend, one of the most high-profile Latinas in Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is campaigning for Bernie Sanders in Nevada and California." READ MORE Immigration attorneys say their clients' applications are being refused over the equivalent of failing to dot an I or cross a T. (photo: Adam Maida/Guardian UK) Bureaucracy as a Weapon: How the Trump Administration Is Slowing Asylum Cases Charles Davis, Guardian UK Excerpt: "US Citizenship and Immigration Services is returning applications over the equivalent of failing to dot an I or cross a T." READ MORE Bishop Michael J. Bransfield, shown here presiding over a Mass in 2010, retired in 2018 as church officials announced an investigation into unspecified allegations of financial and sexual misconduct. (photo: Katherine Frey/WP) The Bransfield Report: Post Publishes Secret Vatican Document as Parishioners Demand Answers Shawn Boburg, Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Michelle Boorstein, The Washington Post Excerpt: "For months, civil authorities and Catholic parishioners have sought access to a secret church report about Michael J. Bransfield, the West Virginia bishop ousted for alleged sexual and financial misconduct."  Law enforcement authorities in two jurisdictions contend that it could aid investigations they have launched, and parishioners have said it could help them understand how Bransfield’s behavior went unchecked for so long. But so far, the report has remained out of their reach. The Washington Post obtained a copy of the document in June and has drawn on it and other records for a series of stories about the role of cash gifts among senior clerics in the church’s ongoing sex abuse crisis. The 60-page report is brimming with investigative findings about how Bransfield allegedly groomed and inappropriately touched young men and spent millions of dollars in church money on himself and on fellow clerics. After church officials repeatedly declined to say whether they were going to release the report, The Post has decided to publish it on its website for the first time with some details redacted to protect the identities of alleged victims of sexual improprieties. The Post is doing so in response to significant interest from the public. “The people of West Virginia cannot trust that an adequate investigation has been done, or that ‘amends’ have really been made if we do not know the full picture of the behavior of Bransfield and of diocesan personnel,” Michael Iafrate, a co-coordinator for the lay organization Catholic Committee of Appalachia, said last month. Church officials in West Virginia have said they don’t have a copy of the report, even though two people with knowledge of the matter say the diocese paid more than $500,000 for the investigation. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the investigation. “The Holy See commissioned the preliminary investigation, thus the report belongs to the Holy See,” Tim Bishop, a spokesman for the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, said in a statement. “The Diocese paid the costs associated with the investigation because it was warranted by the conduct of its former bishop.” The spokesman did not respond to a question about the $500,000 claim. Bransfield retired in September 2018, as church officials announced Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori would oversee an investigation into unspecified allegations of financial and sexual misconduct. Lori hired the law firm Zuckerman Spaeder to lead a five-person investigative team that included two lawyers from the firm, the chancellor of the Baltimore diocese, a financial consultant and a retired human resources official from the West Virginia diocese. Since February, when the confidential investigative report was completed, West Virginia’s attorney general and police in Washington, D.C., have issued subpoenas to church officials in Wheeling and Baltimore, seeking the report and other records about Bransfield that they believe could help investigations into sex abuse claims. In public statements, church officials repeatedly pledged to cooperate. “The Diocese stands ready to cooperate fully with any civil investigation and law enforcement request,” Bishop told The Post in October. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said the church is not fulfilling its promise. “The Diocese has denied our request for the Bransfield report, saying the report is with the Pope and out of its hands,” said Morrisey, who asked for the confidential report as part of a lawsuit against the diocese alleging that it knowingly hired sexual predators. “How is that cooperating?” Sean Caine, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, also said that the report was the property of the Vatican. Caine did not respond to a question about whether the archdiocese has a copy. “The report on the preliminary investigation was sent to Rome,” Caine said in a statement. A Vatican spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. Bransfield has denied wrongdoing. In recent months, FBI agents have interviewed multiple church officials in West Virginia about Bransfield. It is not clear if they have asked for the report. An FBI spokesman declined to comment. D.C. police are probing an allegation that Bransfield inappropriately touched a 9-year-old girl on a church trip to the nation’s capital. They have sent subpoenas for a broad array of Bransfield-related documents to church leaders in West Virginia and the archdioceses of Baltimore and Philadelphia, where Bransfield started his career. The subpoenas, signed by a D.C. Superior Court judge on Sept. 20, demand “all records that in any way relate to any allegations of sexual or physical abuse” involving Bransfield, “regardless of whether the allegations were ultimately deemed credible,” according to a copy obtained by The Post. West Virginia and Philadelphia have provided some records, according to a person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. Baltimore officials are considering the matter, the person said. “The Archdiocese is reviewing the document to understand what is requested,” Caine said on Thursday. “We will be fully cooperative in our response, as is our long-standing practice.” READ MORE A protester chants and raises the peace sign above a sit-in on May 2, 2019, in Khartoum, Sudan. (photo: David Degner/Getty Images) A Progressive Foreign Policy for Africa Elizabeth Schmidt, Jacobin Excerpt: "Africa, the world's second-largest continent in both size and population, rarely receives coverage in the mainstream US press." READ MORE Wolves standing in the woods on a cold winter day. (photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto) 2020 Ballot Initiative Would Restore Wolves to Colorado Mongabay Excerpt: "Earlier this month, more than 200,000 signatures were delivered to the Colorado secretary of state calling for the restoration of gray wolves (Canis lupus) to be put on the 2020 statewide ballot." READ MORE Contribute to RSN Update My Monthly Donation

Three Donald Trump appointees owe IRS back taxes – Center for Public Integrity

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Three Donald Trump appointees owe IRS back taxes – Center for Public Integrity

Officials include White House director of intergovernmental affairs.

Versions of this article appear in TIME, Salon, the Buffalo News and Public Radio International.

INTRODUCTION

At least three of President Donald Trump’s political appointees are drawing taxpayer-funded paychecks while owing the Internal Revenue Service tens of thousands of dollars, a Center for Public Integrity review of federal financial disclosures reveals.

Trump’s appointment of federal debtors to his administration perpetuates a pattern that’s dogged presidential administrations — including that of President Barack Obama — for decades.

Trump himself has yet to address the issue in any meaningful way. Meanwhile, a billaimed in part at disqualifying serious tax scofflaws from federal employment has languished since Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced it in January. (Chaffetz resigned in June.)

“The Trump administration is proving to be no different than any of the others,” said Marcus Owens, a partner at law firm Loeb & Loeb and former director of the IRS’ exempt organizations division. “For senior executives, particularly, there should be some requirement that they should stay current on their taxes.”

White House spokeswoman Natalie Strom declined to answer questions about the White House’s policies on employing people who owe the IRS money or whether Trump himself would like his appointees to retire their IRS debts.

The Trump administration officials’ IRS debts were spotted by reporters and volunteers for #CitizenSleuth, a project launched last month by the Center for Public Integrity and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. The crowd-sourced investigation is examining detailed financial disclosures from more than 400 top Trump administration officials and nominees, including nearly 190 who reported owing someone money — from student loans to mortgages to credit card debt.

The Trump appointees reporting money owed to the federal government include Justin Clark, a prominent Trump White House aide, who owes up to $50,000 in back taxes, according to disclosure records.

A financial disclosure filed by Clark, the White House director of intergovernmental affairs and a deputy assistant to the president, does not indicate he’s actively paying off his debts through an IRS-approved payment plan. In his role, Clark serves as the White House’s liaison to state, local and tribal governments.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Special Assistant Joe Alexander and White House Liaison for the Corporation for National and Community Service Deborah Cox-Roush, who each also reported owing up to $50,000 in federal taxes, indicate they are on payment plans, according to their financial disclosures.

Trump administration appointee Deborah Cox-Roush poses with President Doland Trump in this undated photo

Reached by phone, Cox-Roush explained that she didn’t withhold enough money from her income earlier this decade, and therefore, got behind on her taxes. She expects to clear her debts in full by September. The White House expressed no concerns to Cox-Roush about her tax situation, she added.

“It’s not been an issue, and I’ve done what the law has allowed me to do,” said Cox-Roush, who according to her LinkedIn resume also serves as director of the Senior Corps. Until June, she worked as a special assistant to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Clark earns a taxpayer-funded annual salary of $165,000, according to White House records. Alexander, whom ProPublica identified as a “GS-15” employee on the federal pay scale, would earn somewhere from $103,672 and $134,776, based on that designation.

Cox-Roush was a GS-15 employee during her stint at the Department of Education, although it’s unclear how much she earns at her new job. Clark and Alexander, as well as representatives of the Department of Agriculture, did not return requests for comment.

IRS spokesman Bruce Friedland declined to comment on the matter, citing federal privacy laws. In general, the IRS advises that “those who receive a bill from the IRS should not ignore it.”

Strom, the White House spokeswoman, emphasized that federal officials owing the IRS money is “hardly a new practice,” adding: “I’m just wondering why it’s such a big deal that these three people voluntarily disclosed that they owe the IRS money, especially when two of them are even already on a payment plan with the IRS as your records show.”

Indeed, the issue of key federal government officials owing the IRS money isn’t new and dogged the Obama administration, as well.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testifies on Capitol Hill in July 2012.
(J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Take the case of Timothy Geithner, who once paid back taxes before becoming Obama’s treasury secretary — a position in which Geithner oversaw the IRS.

Early in Obama’s administration, 41 aides working in the Executive Office of the President together owed the tax man more than $831,000, according to a Washington Post analysis of IRS data.

By late 2014, 45 of the 1,823 people employed by the Obama administration’s Executive Office of the President had delinquent income tax payments together worth about $460,000, according to a periodic report issued by the IRS’ Federal Employee/Retiree Delinquency Initiative.

Unlike the personal financial disclosures revealing the three Trump officials’ five-figure IRS debts, these earlier Obama-era reports do not name names or reveal debt details.

There is also no comparable IRS debt data yet available for the federal workforce in 2017, making it impossible to know whether current White House officials and federal employees in general owe the IRS less money — or more — under Trump’s administration.

Moreover, Trump has only been in office since Jan. 20 and has not fully populated his administration with key personnel. Hundreds of political positions Trump is responsible for filling are either vacant because he hasn’t appointed people to fill them or because the Senate has not confirmed people he’s nominated.

Many key Trump administration personnel also have yet to file public personal financial disclosures that are supposed to list personal debts, so it’s impossible to know whether anyone else owes the IRS money.

Government watchdogs say situations in which key federal officials owe back taxes undercuts Americans’ faith in their government.

“Public leaders should be responsible in their own affairs, and owing such a debt could lead to instances of corruption,” said Scott H. Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan nonprofit.

“We should hold people we appoint to political positions to a high standard,” said Ryan Alexander, president Taxpayers for Common Sense, another nonpartisan nonprofit. “Clarifying what the standards even are would be helpful.”

As for the IRS, Trump is angling to shrink it: His 2018 budget proposal calls for staffing cuts to the bureau. Trump also wants to cut the IRS’ overall budget to $9.65 billion, down from $12.1 billion six years ago and about $11.2 billion last fiscal year. (Congress has indicated it probably won’t cut IRS funding as deeply as Trump would like.)

Trump himself reported no IRS debt on a personal financial disclosure form he filed in June.

He is, however, no stranger to debt, writ large: His latest personal financial disclosures indicate he has at least $315 million of it, largely stemming from business ventures and owed to a variety of foreign and domestic creditors.

Trump, citing an ongoing audit by the IRS, has categorically refused to release his personal tax returns, bucking a practice followed by every major presidential candidate since the 1960s. The IRS itself has stated that “nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.”

Such documents would reveal Trump’s tax rate, overall tax payments and charitable giving, among other financial information not contained within standard personal financial disclosure documents.

https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/three-donald-trump-appointees-owe-irs-back-taxes/?fbclid=IwAR3kCMvt-atenUVqmTPfsWRWruFAsQ-pOwQTK_mgBI8y2a-bsf5LhhYmzAg

Panama ‘leaks’ Only Mention Enemies Of The West

Panama ‘leaks’ Only Mention Enemies Of The West

Editor’s note: The ‘leaks’ target Syria, Russia and Iceland specifically. All 3 seen as obstacles for the western elite/globalists. Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin not being named in any of the leaks, the western corporate media has used his photo as the lead in their news stories.

Whoever leaked the Mossack Fonseca papers appears motivated by a genuine desire to expose the system that enables the ultra wealthy to hide their massive stashes, often corruptly obtained and all involved in tax avoidance.

These Panamanian lawyers hide the wealth of a significant proportion of the 1%, and the massive leak of their documents ought to be a wonderful thing.

Unfortunately the leaker has made the dreadful mistake of turning to the western corporate media to publicise the results. In consequence the first major story, published today by the Guardian, is all about Vladimir Putin and a cellist on the fiddle. As it happens I believe the story and have no doubt Putin is bent.

But why focus on Russia? Russian wealth is only a tiny minority of the money hidden away with the aid of Mossack Fonseca. In fact, it soon becomes obvious that the selective reporting is going to stink.

The Suddeutsche Zeitung, which received the leak, gives a detailed explanation of the methodology the corporate media used to search the files. The main search they have done is for names associated with breaking UN sanctions regimes. The Guardian reports this too and helpfully lists those countries as Zimbabwe, North Korea, Russia and Syria. The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda.

There is no mention at all of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires – the main customers. And the Guardian is quick to reassure that “much of the leaked material will remain private.”

What do you expect? The leak is being managed by the grandly but laughably named “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists”, which is funded and organised entirely by the USA’s Center for Public Integrity.

Their funders include:

– Ford Foundation

– Carnegie Endowment

– Rockefeller Family Fund

– W K Kellogg Foundation

– Open Society Foundation (Soros)

…among many others. Do not expect a genuine expose of western capitalism. The dirty secrets of western corporations will remain unpublished.

Expect hits at Russia, Iran and Syria and some tiny “balancing” western country like Iceland. A superannuated UK peer or two will be sacrificed – someone already with dementia.

The corporate media – the Guardian and BBC in the UK – have exclusive access to the database which you and I cannot see. They are protecting themselves from even seeing western corporations’ sensitive information by only looking at those documents which are brought up by specific searches such as UN sanctions busters. Never forget the Guardian smashed its copies of the Snowden files on the instruction of MI6.

What if they did Mossack Fonseca database searches on the owners of all the corporate media and their companies, and all the editors and senior corporate media journalists? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on all the most senior people at the BBC? What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every donor to the Center for Public Integrity and their companies?

What if they did Mossack Fonseca searches on every listed company in the western stock exchanges, and on every western millionaire they could trace?

That would be much more interesting. I know Russia and China are corrupt, you don’t have to tell me that. What if you look at things that we might, here in the west, be able to rise up and do something about?

And what if you corporate lapdogs let the people see the actual data?

Source: hangthebankers.com

RSN: Amnesty International: Israeli Forces Have 'Ripped Up the Rulebook', Koch Brothers Pour Millions Into Education to Promote Conservative Ideals

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Andy Borowitz | Jeb Quits Race With "Mission Accomplished" Banner 
 
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker 
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Koch Brothers Pour Millions Into Education to Promote Conservative Ideals 
Dave Levinthal, Al Jazeera America 
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Last UK Detainee Released From Guantanamo 
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Excerpt: "Shaker Aamer, an inmate at the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention center, has reportedly been released in the early hours Friday morning, making him the last British detainee to leave the island prison." 
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Amnesty International: Israeli Forces Have 'Ripped Up the Rulebook' 
Ma'an News Agency 
Excerpt: "Amnesty International on Tuesday demanded that Israel stop unlawful killings in occupied Palestinian territory, stating that Israeli forces appeared to have 'ripped up the rulebook.'" 
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Toxic Racism: Poor Immigrants Live in Most Polluted Parts of US 
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Excerpt: "Research suggests that the places foreign-born Latinos call home have the worst air pollution in the United States." 
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Russian bank hires two former U.S. senators

U.S. sanctions against Russia are becoming a boon for Washington's lobbyists

By Alexander Cohenemail

1:34 pm, September 2, 2014 Updated: 12:49 pm, September 3, 2014

 

 

Gazprombank GPB (OJSC), a Russian bank targeted with sanctions by President Obama over the Ukraine crisis, has hired two former U.S. senators to lobby against those sanctions, according to a new disclosure filed with the Senate.

Gazprombank is controlled by Russia’s state-owned energy company Gazprom, the country’s largest gas producer; it supplies about a third of Europe’s natural gas.

In a filing submitted Friday and effective that day, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and former Senator John Breaux, D-La., are listed as the main lobbyists under the Gazprombank account for the firm Squire Patton Boggs, lobbying on “banking laws and regulations including applicable sanctions.”


http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/09/02/15450/russian-bank-hires-two-former-us-senators?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=watchdog&utm_medium=publici-email&goal=0_ffd1d0160d-25e894c918-100065557&mc_cid=25e894c918&mc_eid=63d5b1d023