Category Archives: Cabinet
EU US Ireland Unhappy Bite Of Apple
Ireland has a 12.5% corporate tax rate. The US has a 39.5% rate.
So Apple moved its Intellectual Property operations to Ireland. And, due to a complicated 1990s agreement, the company doesn’t even pay the 12.5% rate. It’s more like .005%. (Apple did pay $3 billion in U.S. income taxes in the third quarter.) You can read how it works here, complete with a chart.
Ireland is happy with the arrangement. Apple has $200 billion parked there and employs lots of people.
EU Bite Of Apple
The U.S. is unhappy because it’s not able to take its full 39% bite out of Apple. The European Union is unhappy too.
So unhappy that it has ordered Ireland to collect $14 billion in taxes from Apple.
Now the U.S. is unhappy with the EU. The Treasury Department says the money grab damages U.S. – EU economic relations.
No Clinton Foundation Access for Benghazi Dead
An AP story says 85 of 154 meetings Hillary Clinton had regarding private interests, when she was Secretary of State, were with Clinton Foundation donors.
Clinton Foundation Access Fit For A Prince
Some of those donors represented foreign interests too. Politico reported that the crown prince of Bahrain used his Clinton Foundation connection to get a meeting with Secretary Clinton. That was after he struck out going through “normal channels. So Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band emailed Huma Abedin with the request:
“Cp of Bahrain in tomorrow to Friday[.] Asking to see her[.] Good friend of ours,” Band wrote Abedin on her State Department email address on June 23, 2009.
Abedin responded the same day, a Tuesday, that the crown prince had asked to see Clinton through “normal channels” on Thursday and Friday.
“I asked and she said she doesn’t want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel. Also, she says that she may want to go to ny and doesn’t want to be committed to stuff in ny [sic],” Abedin wrote via her State account, following up that she meant “stuff in dc.”
Band responded to the first message, “Cool.”
Two days later, on June 25, 2009, Abedin wrote Band: “Offering bahrain cp 10 tomorrow for mtg [with ] hrc[.] If u see him, let him know.”
“We have reached out thru official channels,” Abedin added in the same message.
Band responded: “Nice[.] Abdullah is his guy[.] He’s great[.]”
Crown Prince Salman had committed $32 million to scholarships through the Clinton Global initiative.
Obama No Ransom Iran Nuclear Deal Narrative
Earlier this month he WSJ reported that the Obama administration shipped Iran a pallet of foreign cash worth $400 million. President Obama scolded the press for asking if the delivery of the unmarked bills, in an unmarked plane, in the middle of the night was ransom.
You’ve probably seen his four step reply:
1) The payment was old news.
2) It was Iran’s money.
3) It’s illegal to trade dollars with Iran.
4) We don’t pay ransom.
Then he mocked reporters by saying, it “defies logic” that we would pay ransom. He also said the story “reads like a spy novel.”
So it does.
For good measure State Department spokesman John Kirby tweeted:
“Reports of link between prisoner release & payment to Iran are completely false.”
So the WSJ reporters, Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee, dug a little deeper and learned that the payment was “specifically timed to the release of several American prisoners held in Iran.” The money was loaded onto an Iranian cargo plane in Geneva, Switzerland. And it wasn’t released until a plane departing Tehran with the prisoners was “wheels up.”
It’s Not Ransom. It’s Leverage. Or Not.
Based on the new information Kirby was asked by a reporter:
Q: “In basic English, you are saying you wouldn’t give [Iran] the 400 million in cash until the prisoners were released, correct?”
A: “That’s correct,” Kirby responded.
Iranians call it “ransom” (they’re already collecting more ransom chips). Kirby calls it “leverage.”
Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said, “I never used the world leverage” – leaving Kirby hanging out to dry.
Obama Launders Iran Ransom Money
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was busted for paying hush money by making cash withdrawals that would be difficult to trace. Never mind that he was a perv trying to hide the fact that he had molested a high school wrestler. It was violating the $10,000 cash withdrawal limit that got him busted.
Well, the WSJ reported yesterday that the Obama administration tried to hide a $400 million cash payment to Iran. And it tried to hide the purpose of the payment – ransom of five hostages.
The Justice Department opposed the deal.
Michelle Kosinski of CNN asked White House spokesman Josh Earnest if the hostages would have been released without the payment. He refused to answer. Actually, Earnest’s drawn out unrelated responses were kind of amusing. You can see the exchange at the -41:11 mark of this C-SPAN video.
Ransom Laundry
The ransom was paid in Swiss Francs and Euros delivered by unmarked plane in the middle of the night. Since it’s against the law to trade dollars with Iran Dr. Krauthammer says the administration is guilty of money laundering.
Obviously, it wasn’t a coincidence. The reason that it was objected to by Justice, there is a statute that prohibits us from engaging in Iran dealing with dollars. So, they had to print the money here, ship it over to Switzerland, turn it into Swiss francs and euros and ship it over to Iran. If a private company had done this, this is called money laundering. The CEO would be in jail right now.”
He added, “The reason it was concealed is because it’s illegal. That’s why Congress wasn’t notified, because it’s scandalous for the administration to explicitly defy a law that says you can’t deal in American currency. And the second thing is, it isn’t only that it encourages terrorism in the future, it’s that the money is in cash. Why in cash? Because that you can’t trace it. It’s going to go straight to Hezbollah, straight to Hamas, straight to terrorists in Iraq.”
Update:
Andrew McCarthy in National Review maintains Obama committed a felony. He says the law restricts the transfer of value to Iran in any way.
By his own account, President Obama engaged in the complex cash transfer in order to end-run sanctions that prohibit the U.S. from having “a banking relationship with Iran.” The point of the sanctions is not to prevent banking with Iran; it is to prevent Iran from getting value from or through our financial system — the banking prohibition is a corollary. And the point of sanctions, if you happen to be the president of the United States sworn to execute the laws faithfully, is to follow them — not pat yourself on the back for keeping them in place while you willfully evade them. The president’s press conference is better understood as a confession than an explanation.
Black Lives Lie Matters
The deaths on live video of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling created a shocking impression, to say the least. How do you draw a cartoon about a snuff film?
I held off because things don’t always turn out the way they seem. Learned that from the Michael Brown case in Ferguson. Brown was portrayed by the media as a “gentle giant”. Eric Holder’s Justice Department found him to be a thug who was shot and killed while attacking a police officer.
“Hands up don’t shoot” was a lie but Black Lives Matter ran with it anyway.
The irony is five Dallas police officers died while defending a Black Lives protest march.
” I may not agree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.” – Not just words.
Black Lives
Eugene Robinson explains here why “the racial divide, has its roots in lingering claims of white supremacy.”
John Gibbs explains here why Robinson is full of it. He blames Obama for wrongly “accusing the police and justice system at large of racism.”
And here’s an eight and a half minute YouTube by Paul Joseph Watson that tells the truth about Black Lives Matter.
