Tina Turner Latest to Renounce US Citizenship

The famous threatened to leave when Bush was president, but apparently some actually are leaving the country—even renouncing their citizenship—while Obama’s in charge.

Tina Turner is the latest to return her U.S. passport. She will become citizen of Switzerland where she’s been living since 1995. It should be noted that the United States and Switzerland do allow dual citizenship.

Last year, Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook, renounced his U.S. Citizenship, prior to the initial public offering of Facebook, to reduce his tax liability. He had moved to Singapore in 2011, where there is no capital gains tax.

According to a Bloomberg article on Severin’s move, “A record 1,780 gave up their U.S. passports last year (2011) compared with 235 in 2008, according to government records.”

During the reelection campaign of President George W. Bush in 2004, Alec Baldwin, director Robert Altman, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, among others, threatened to leave the USA if President George Bush was elected. None of them acted on it, however, and some backpedaled to "clarify" their position after Bush was reelected.

The United States is not the only country where the wealthy are leaving their homeland to avoid oppressive government taxation. After the Socialist French government went to raise the their top tax rate from 41 percent to 75 percent for top earners, film star Gerard Depardieu threatened to renounce his French citizenship and planned to move to Belgium. He ended up being granted Russian citizenship by a special decree from Russian President Vladimir Putin, bypassing the usual citizenship process because of his "outstanding services to cinematography." Russia has a flat income-tax rate of 13 percent. The French plan has been struck down by France's highest court for now, but lawmakers are working on a way to reinstate it.

Downtown Scotty Brown, 41, Future Presidential Candidate…what!?

Republican candidate for President?

The state that held the original Boston Tea Party had another tea party of sorts. Although the White House is playing the election down, no one in the real world missed the significance of a Massachusetts win by a candidate who is not only a republican, but a conservative, to a post held by one of the most liberal senators ever. The last republican senator from Massachusetts left office in 1979.

He referred to Washington as “the machine,” described himself as a “Scott Brown Republican,” corrected pundits that the office was “the people’s seat,” drove a GM pickup truck with 200K miles on it and was a high school basketball star with the nickname “Downtown Scotty Brown.” The republican buzz around Scott Brown was similar to that of Governor Sarah Palin: An independent conservative who will fight his own party if necessary and a populist, outsider candidate.

It was the culmination of a long year of protests on Washington at a Congress who had turned a deaf ear to the populace and had a general, “we know better what’s good for you” attitude. The media, White House toadies and Obama made fun of the tea party protesters. Now, with Brown’s election, democrats have stopped laughing, realizing their re-election is not assured. The health care bill is in doubt as many are having second thoughts about losing their elected positions just to get it passed. The president has given the people “change,” but not the change they wanted and the “hope” now is about making Congress listen, one way or another. Voters are hungering for a positive message that’s not just political spin. We long to hear about the “shining city of the hill” again.

“Four years ago, we raised a banner of bold colors -- no pale pastels. We proclaimed a dream of an America that would be ‘a shining city on a hill.’ We came together in a national crusade to make America great again, and to make a new beginning. Well, now it's all coming together. With our beloved nation at peace, we're in the midst of a springtime of hope for America. Greatness lies ahead of us.” Ronald Reagan, 1984

How refreshing that was compared to a president who travels the globe, bowing to foreign leaders and apologizing. Obama is antithesis of Reagan—in his mind America is not a great country. Just the opposite. One of the first things he did was speaking to Europe, the middle east and the UN, apologizing for America’s behavior. Most Americans certainly don’t feel that way and felt Obama’s “Apology Tour” only weakened us to both our friends and our enemies.

Many in the conservative ‘verse were hoping Brown would deliver the rebuttal to Obama’s state of the union. (He’s not—another new face, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, will have that honor.) However, some are already talking a presidential run for the attractive, charismatic young senator. Let’s hold on for just a moment…

Senator Scott Brown

It’s easy for people to latch onto and pour their hopes and dreams into a candidate. Remember Barack Hussein Obama? Even when he told cheering audiences exactly how he would wreck the country if elected, they only chose to hear, “Hope and Change.” When little is known about a candidate, voters tend to mold that person into their own ideal.

You might also recall a time when some in the republican party debated a constitutional amendment to allow naturalized citizens to run for president. All this came about when Arnold Schwarzenegger was running for governor. However, after his policies ran to the far left and his popularity tanked, you don’t hear anyone wistful that he could run for higher office.

So while we’re all excited about “41,” let’s wait and see what Brown does in office and hope he will live up to the hype of the campaign trail.

New Airport Scanners Breach UK Child Pornography Laws

The UK's Guardian reported late Monday that the full body scanners being tested in the UK and like those planned for the US, are being challenged on the grounds that they breached UK laws against child pornography and cannot be used on those under 18. Under the Protection of Children Act 1978, it is "illegal to create an indecent image or a 'pseudo-image' of a child." I posed a question a few days ago: How many parents are going to want some stranger viewing virtually naked pictures of their child(ren) from these scanners? On the other hand, we know terrorist groups are more than willing to blow up their children as well as ours. And they quickly adapt their strategy...make them take of their shoes and they put the explosives down their pants....

While awaiting a ruling, "voluntary trials" started last month for those 18 and over. One wonders how many actual "volunteers" they could get unless they were offering a choice between a scan and a body cavity search. And the question of whether the machines would be used in a, "lawful and proportionate and sensitive manner based on rational criteria rather than racial or religious bias" has been broached,   thus setting up the protest which will certainly be used by any group or person attempting to smuggle such a weapon.

The expensive, doomed debacle that is the full body scanner slogs on. But there is a glimmer of hope...celebrities:

...concerns were echoed by Simon Davies of Privacy International who said he was sceptical of the privacy safeguards being used in the United States. Although the American system insists on the deletion of the images, he believed scans of celebrities or of people with unusual or freakish body profiles would prove an "irresistible pull" for some employees.

Maybe, just maybe...if those elite jet setters (and even better yet, some politicians) realize they and their families might be in for a little more publicity than they bargained, the idea will be quashed before too many tax dollars are paid out.