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Friday, August 19, 2011

How Much Does it Cost to Destroy a Democracy?"

I've been thinking about this for months now and I'm going to put it out to the universe, where all things are answered.

How much does it cost to destroy a democracy? 
What is it worth to the person who is helping to destroy a country?

A couple of weeks ago I had a dream right after a discussion of raises at work.  In the dream an unknown person approached a table and said "We've raised $22 million dollars for this years distribution.  Just give us a list with the percentages and we will distribute it."

The dream was a combination of the discussions at work and my on-going questions
"How much does it cost to destroy a democracy?"
"What is it worth to the person who is helping to destroy a country?"

For those of you who follow my writings - you know exactly what I am talking about.

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Today on the radio I heard a story about
Bradley Birkenfeld

Bradley Birkenfeld is in prison because even though he was a whistleblower, he also allegedly committed a crime.

What did  Bradley Birkenfeld whistleblow?

Bradley Birkenfeld worked for UBS Banks - in Switzerland.
While he worked there he found out about 15,000 - 19,000 (depends on the report) Americans who were evading US taxes with Swiss bank accounts.

He reported it to the DOJ and the investigation ensued and subsequently the IRS was able to recover Billions of dollars in owed taxes on these Swiss bank accounts.

"UBS agreed to turn over the names of 4,450 of its American clients to the Justice Department. That's just a portion of 19,000 American accounts the bank has admitted keeping secret from U.S. tax officials."

That leaves 14,450 names that weren't turned over to the DOJ.

Yet CBS news reported that:  "Meanwhile, the investigations sent nearly 15,000 American tax offenders, the vast majority with undeclared UBS accounts, into the arms of a new IRS amnesty program, agreeing to pay billions in back taxes and fines to avoid prosecution themselves."

And CBS went on to say:  "The bank would admit to intentionally subverting U.S. tax laws and defrauding the U.S. government by sending dozens of unregistered bankers, Birkenfeld among them, to the United States on thousands of illegal trips to facilitate tax evasion schemes for wealthy U.S.-based clients - a fraud hiding as much as $20 billion in secret undeclared accounts and earning UBS up to $200 million a year in ill-begotten profits."

I wonder if one of those trips was to pick up the distributions of the $22 million dollars from my dream?

When I heard this story about Bradley Birkenfeld - I thought - we need Anonymous or WikiLeaks to expose all these people!   

But CBS cautions that this type of data dump would be almost impossible because: "At UBS, clients' names and their account information are divided irreconcilably between separate computer servers in secret locations. Even for a world-class hacker with free roam of electronic bank records, identifying the owner of a numbered account is literally "Mission: Impossible." Nowhere do names and numbers appear side-by-side."

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My challenge to Anonymous or WikiLeaks is to prove them wrong.  I think if you did - you would probably blow the biggest story in the history of American democracy and expose those who seek to destroy it.

My other questions are
"I wonder how many 31 countries who offer offshore banks accounts hold money earned for destroying a democracy?" 
"And I wonder how many of those banks have UBS's level of security?"
"And I wonder how many US Congressional members and State legislators, have off-shore accounts?"

I wonder -
"How much does it cost to destroy a democracy?"
"What is it worth to the person who is helping to destroy a country?"
"And I wonder which banks they hide that dirty money in ?"

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