Obama Takes His BS To Massachusetts! He Is Slick. Amazing He Did Not Slide Off The Stage!

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My friend Avi has written about another way to launder money.  This time in a wine bottle!  (See 1 below.)
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My sentiments exactly.  (See 2 below.)
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Our president would have you ignore the huge cost and bumbled start of Obamascare software yet, he does not apply the same request when it comes to something he does not favor - a scientific breakthrough which will make coal cleaner. 

Double standards and hypocrisy is what he is always about. (See 3 below.)

Today he defended his healthcare disaster in Massachusetts with a picked audience of brain dead nodders behind him and did what he does best. He used smooth oratory to attack those who oppose him by imputing lies to them and and more b--- s----.  He is so slick I was surprised he did not slide off the stage!

Of course, what he did not tell the citizens of Massachusetts, their own plan is fast going busted because it is costing more than they can afford but "what difference does it make?"

Also this time it was not GW's fault. It was the insurance companies who were engaged in fraud selling bad apple plans etc.
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The New York Times gives its readings some truth finally regarding the hot water Obama's policies have created for our nation with its allies.  The PM of Turkey was Obama's closest buddy only a few months ago and now he treats our little squeamish president with disdain. Yes, times sho' have changed!  (See 4 below.)
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First Straw Poll Conducted With All the Candidates Present Shows Johnson's Strong Conservative Appeal

  

Savannah, GA - With all the GOP candidates for Georgia's First Congressional District in attendance and each provided time to speak at length on various issues and answer questions, The Savannah Area Young Republicans concluded their candidate forum Tuesday evening with a surprise straw poll of its membership. Savannah surgeon, and retired Army Ranger Dr. Bob Johnson won with 31% of the vote finishing eight points ahead of his nearest competitor.

  

"Politicians in office today are mortgaging these young people's future -- because I'm not a politician, but a true conservative with real-life experience as a doctor and soldier, I believe my fiscally sound principles and compelling personal story connected with the Young Republicans here tonight," Dr. Bob Johnson said following the straw poll.  "I appreciate this strong vote of confidence and support for my campaign and I pledge to lead a conservative fight in Washington to overturn ObamaCare and slash wasteful government spending so today's young professionals can be free to make America a better place," Dr. Johnson concluded.

  

  

Results of the Savannah Area Young Republican straw poll:

Bob Johnson - 31%
Buddy Carter - 23%
Jeff Chapman - 15%
Darwin Carter - 15%
Undecided - 15%

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Dick
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1) Tainted Wine
Money laundering taints wine trade

by Avi Jorisch

Bucolic regions in the south of France represent the newest frontier for law enforcement and intelligence officials searching for dirty funds. Since 2008, thousands of illicit actors have reportedly arrived in southwest France from Eastern Europe, Hong Kong and mainland China and snapped up vineyards to launder their money. European and Asian officials must take steps and curb this trend, including establishing Trade Transparency Units (TTUs) to combat trade fraud.

In its latest annual report, the French anti-money laundering unit, Tracfin, singled out Chinese, Russians and Ukrainians who buy vineyards, voicing concern that they might be using this type of investment to clean their ill-gotten gains. According to wine analysts, Chinese purchasers are one of the largest groups of vineyard owners in France and have been purchasing so many estates in the Bordeaux region that the local Chamber of Commerce reportedly has a help desk specifically for them. Chinese nationals own as many as 50 wine estates and vineyards in the region, and there arereports of Chinese purchases in Burgundy. Russian investors are following suit, but according to wine experts, they prefer the Cognac region.

Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a respected organization in Washington that monitors money laundering, reports a significant amount of illicit money leaving China and Russia, which partially explains these types of investments. According to GFI estimates, between 2000 and 2011, nearly $4 trillion dollars left China's economy, principally for tax evasion purposes, and between 1994 and 2011, over $200 billion flowed out of Russia. The vast majority of this tainted money was moved using trade-based money laundering (TBML) schemes. According to GFI, developing countries are losing approximately $100 billion every year to trade mispricing, which represents approximately 4.4 percent of the developing world's total government revenue.

Typically, TBML schemes involve invoice fraud and trade manipulation, principally via misrepresentation of price, quantity or quality of imports or exports. Specific tactics include over-invoicing, under-invoicing, double-invoicing, and false invoicing. With these methods, illicit actors can move large amounts of money and avoid taxes, tariffs, and customs duties. TBML greatly complicates law enforcement efforts to follow the financial trail.

Purchasing vineyards is an excellent method to launder money. Reports have emerged of prospective vineyard owners in France offering to pay in cash, which should throw up a bright red flag. Moreover, The price of wine is never fixed; it is easy to over- or under-invoice; paying in cash is not atypical; and perhaps best of all, it has all the trappings of high society.

According to Tracfin, foreign investors are buying wineries through multiple holding companies and complex legal structures involving tax havens and jurisdictions of money-laundering concern. Often a legal French company is established whose shareholders include foreign shell companies, making it almost impossible to determine who actually owns the company or what the source of their money is.

What can be done to stop illicit actors from abusing trade and laundering the proceeds of crime? To their credit, the Chinese and Russian governments have begun to take money laundering more seriously and have increased efforts to curb illicit finance. China has now raised the issue of money laundering to the "national strategic level" in order to stop the massive flow of funds out of the country, according to Li Dongrong, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China. In addition, on July 1, Russia's Vladimir Nechaev become president of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the preeminent international organization combating money laundering and terrorism finance. However, the law enforcement and intelligence community can do much more, including cross-border sharing of intelligence on companies, individuals and financial institutions facilitating these type of investments.

The issue of wineries speaks to a larger problem. Few jurisdictions worldwide have done much to counter this type of laundering, and even the FATF has failed to issue an international standard or guidance on trade-based money laundering.

The most effective way of combating TBML is to actively monitor export and import records of a commodity traded between two countries. Allowing for some recognized variables, the data should match, and any wide discrepancies could indicate trade fraud (including TBML) or corruption. Such anomalies could also be the back door to underground remittance systems and informal value transfer systems used by both money launderers and terrorists. A number of countries—including several Latin American countries, the Philippines, and the United States—have created TTUs and compare data in order to pursue illicit actors abusing trade to launder the proceeds of crime. Ultimately, a global network should be created for data exchange between countries. France, China and the Ukraine should also create TTUs and start pursuing those abusing TBML.

In addition, the FATF's Typologies Working Group should issue a report on wineries and the methods employed to abuse the international financial sector. France's wine country is probably not alone; in all likelihood, well-known wine regions throughout the world, including in the United States, Spain, New Zealand and Argentina, are being abused by illicit actors.

Countries would be wise to get serious about sharing financial intelligence, bilaterally and via traditional international channels. Wineries represent the tip of the iceberg when it comes to abuse of the international financial sector. Just as the financial system has become global, so, too, has the threat posed by tainted money. In confronting this threat, the system is only as strong as its weakest link.
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2)

George Will: Let Obamacare Crash and Burn

By Bill Hoffmann

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will says President Barack Obama has, by his actions, confirmed the Republican view that the Affordable Care Act is unworkable.

"It seems to me the president has been emphatic that the Obamacare can be implemented as written. Republicans have said it can't, and then the president confirmed the Republican view by his starkly and unambiguously illegal delay of the employer mandate," Will told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

"That employer mandate starting date was written into the law. The law cannot be changed by presidents unilaterally. It just can't be done," he said Tuesday.

But now that the Affordable Care Act is law, Will said, he agrees with Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy and others that the best way forward may be to let the Affordable Care Act crash on its own.

"The first thing I'd say is . . . he's embraced it, he wants to go forward. Let it. The quickest way to refute all the arguments for Obamacare is to experience Obamacare," Will said.

"My general feeling is stand back, be quiet, and, if anything, make the president ask — beg, really — Congress to rescue him from his own handiwork."

Will also weighed in on the name of the Washington Redskins professional football team and whether it should be changed after charges it is racist toward American Indians.

"First, there's an empirical question: is it a fact that a substantial number of Native Americans are offended by this? We know they're not offended, really, by the Florida State Seminoles, by the tomahawk chop of the Atlanta Braves, by the name of the Cleveland Indians . . . go down the list," said Will, a Fox News commentator.

"There are all kinds of names deriving from the Native American heritage. So, first, empirically, prove to me that a substantial number of Native Americans are offended by this and I will reconsider it. 

"There are all kinds of various white liberals purporting to speak for Native Americans. Let's hear from the Native Americans," Will said.

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3)  

New EPA Rules Will Kill Clean CoalNew EPA Rules Will Kill Clean Coal

Technology for carbon capture could be a boon if regulators give it time.

By

ROBERT M. DUNCAN

In an astounding paradox of modern politics, the Obama administration continues to promote green-energy technologies while also working hard to kill at least one of them. The proof lies in the administration's carbon regulations on coal power plants announced on Sept. 20. The rules would wipe out the development of ecologically important carbon capture and storage technologies.

In announcing the EPA's new carbon regulations, Administrator Gina McCarthy said that new power plants "can minimize their carbon emissions by taking advantage of modern technologies." The fact is that the coal-based industry cannot realistically follow these rules without putting itself out of business.

Carbon capture and storage is a form of clean-coal technology that allows power plants to trap and store their carbon emissions. CCS holds great promise as a means to use coal while drastically lowering carbon emissions.

The technology is still in its infancy, though. The first generation in the U.S. is now being developed through a joint venture between private industry and the government. The goal is to demonstrate that CCS can operate reliably and safely on large power plants.

Only one first-generation CCS project is now being built on a large power plant in the U.S.: the Kemper County plant in Mississippi. As the Journal pointed out in an Oct. 13 article ("Mississippi Plant Shows the Cost of Clean Coal"), Kemper has been plagued by serious cost overruns and illustrates how expensive CCS implementation is today. Incorporating this technology into a new coal plant could cost up to $1 billion.

The second generation of CCS projects is expected to lower costs and improve performance. This is the critical step to ensuring that CCS can be implemented on a broad scale. This is also the step that the Obama administration will be stopping with its latest EPA rules.

The EPA's proposed carbon regulations will require new coal plants to use CCS regardless of the cost. Since only the expensive first-generation technology is now available to utility companies, the EPA is making new coal plants so expensive that no utility will build one.

The administration's action ignores the historical evidence on how new technologies are successfully developed. The first cellphones in the mid-1980s cost more than $4,000 and had the physical characteristics of a brick. Each new technological generation of the mobile device became more advanced, less expensive and more efficient. In 2013, new phones can be purchased for less than $100, have the processing capacity of household computers and are owned by almost everyone.

Like the mobile phone, CCS technologies will become less expensive over time if given the chance. The coal industry already has a proven record when it comes to clean energy technology. There are at least 15 different clean-coal technologies in use by our nation's coal fleet, which have helped reduce emissions by nearly 90% since 1970.

CCS may be the most innovative and valuable of them all. The global market for the technology could exceed more than $1 trillion within the next two decades. If the U.S. is forced out of the CCS business by EPA's rules, other nations like China will pick up the slack and reap these large economic benefits.

Over the past five years, the Obama administration has trumpeted its commitment to clean energy, clean coal technologies and CCS. If this commitment is real, then the EPA regulators should allow CCS technology time to develop and become commercially viable before imposing it on companies. To do otherwise will be dangerous for energy and the environment.

Mr. Duncan is president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity

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4)Allies in Revolt
The Editorial Board - The New York Times,  October 29th, 2013

It is not every day that America finds itself facing open rebellion from its allies, yet that is what is happening with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel. The Obama administration has denied there are serious problems. But there are clearly differences, some perhaps irreconcilable.

Here’s a quick summary: Saudi Arabia and Israel are deeply worried about the Obama administration’s decision to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran — their mortal enemy. Saudi Arabia and Turkey are sore at President Obama’s refusal to become militarily involved in ousting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, in particular his decision not to respond with military strikes to Mr. Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Mr. Obama instead chose a diplomatic deal under which Syria’s chemical weapons would be dismantled.

The Saudis are also unhappy that Mr. Obama withdrew support for Hosni Mubarak, the deposed Egyptian president, and then worked with Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member who was elected to replace Mr. Mubarak but was later thrown out.

All three countries have resorted to threats and displays of pique to make their points. Saudi Arabia renounced a United Nations Security Council seat it had worked hard to win because, it said, the United States and the United Nations had failed to achieve a Mideast peace agreement or solve the Syria crisis, as if either objective could be easily delivered by America alone. Although it is hard to see how other countries like China and Russia would be better alternatives, Saudi officials have gone so far as to complain that they regard the United States as unreliable and would look elsewhere for their security.

Meanwhile, Turkey, a NATO member, has said it would buy a long-range missile defense system worth $3.4 billion from China because China’s bid was lower than bids from the United States and Europe. The decision may also, however, have reflected Turkey’s annoyance with Mr. Obama’s Syria policy. (It’s a dumb deal, too, and Turkish officials now seem to be reconsidering it; China’s system will be hard to integrate with NATO equipment, thus undermining alliance defenses and Turkey’s.)

As for Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing his best to torpedo any nuclear deal with Iran, including urging Congress to impose more economic sanctions on Iran that could bring the incipient negotiations between Iran’s new government and the major powers to a halt.

Much of this anger at the United States is driven by a case of nerves. The Arab Spring uprisings shook the old order, plunged the region into chaos, created opportunities for Iran to expand its influence in Syria and Iraq and threatened to worsen the Sunni-Shiite divide. Saudi Arabia, a Sunni-majority country, in particular, fears an American rapprochement with Shiite-majority Iran.

But Mr. Obama’s first responsibility is to America’s national interest. And he has been absolutely right in refusing to be goaded into a war in Syria or bullied into squandering a rare, if remote, chance to negotiate an Iranian nuclear deal.

In addressing the United Nations last month, Mr. Obama reinforced his intention to narrow his regional diplomatic focus to the Iranian nuclear deal and an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Some have read this as weakness and retreat, rather than pragmatism. We wish he had put more emphasis on Egypt and Iraq. But his priorities make sense. His task now is to reassure the allies that the United States remains committed to their security.

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