Sad

I have come to the conclusion that the U.S. government is not of or by the people but against it.

Our multi-year battle against FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) both in the courts and in Congress has been useless so far.

For those that don't know what FATCA is legislation based on the goal to catch money stashed off shore to escape taxes, not a bad cause in and of itself. However, the government bullied governments all over the world to sign agreements where they must under threat of draconian fines to report every American account.

 While many of the sought of tax dodgers live in the U.S., nine million American expats do not. What the government calls "foreign" banks are their local bank down the street.

Afraid of fines that could put them out of business, banks around the world have spent millions ferreting out American customers, closing their accounts, calling their mortgages, forbidding them to invest, cancelling their credit cards--in other words making it impossible for them to have ordinary financial lives. Even insurance companies were cancelling policies. Employers were not hiring Americans who might have fiduciary responsibilities and who could not participate in the company pension plan, merely for being American.

Congress has referred to expats as tax dodgers, slave traders, drug dealers. Maybe a few are. Most are ordinary people leaving ordinary lives until they were indirectly attacked by their own government.

It is not just expats. The alleged tax reform bill will make life more difficult for ordinary people in the States.

The government sends its youth to phony wars allegedly to protect the homeland, where people are not safe from bad water, oil spills, crumbling roads and bridges, health issues, guns, food, etc. The items on the list is more apt to kill them than any terrorist, just not as directly.

Net neutrality elimination is the latest attack against ordinary Americans.

There is little doubt that congress is bought and paid for by the corporations where the bottom line overrides almost every criteria of human decency.